Illustrations of Dune, Ep. 03 | Lady Jessica: A Science of Religion

THE PREACHER

“You Bene Gesserit call your activity of the Panoplia Prophetica a ‘Science of Religion.’ Very well … It is time you were reminded of that which you so often profess: One cannot have a single thing without its opposite.”

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GAIUS HELEN MOHAIM

(voice wheezes and twangs like an untuned baliset)

“Is he not small for his age, Jessica?”

LADY JESSICA

“The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence.”

GAIUS HELEN

“So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard. Yet he’s already fifteen.”

JESSICA

“Yes, Your Reverence.”

GAIUS HELEN

“He’s awake and listening to us. Sly little rascal. (chuckles) But royalty has need of slyness. And if he’s really the Kwisatz Haderach, well…”

“Sleep well, you sly little rascal. Tomorrow you’ll need all your faculties to meet my Gom Jabbar.”

Obligatory warning that this is the third video in a series and builds off the previous videos, especially the Harkonnen episode, The Science of Discontent. Aside from more context, there’s also more doodles I made for you and a whole cast of voice actors. Like the Orange Catholic Bible says…

GAIUS HELEN

“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind.”

On that note, while I can personally guarantee that each member of my cast has been pronounced human with absolute certainty, I can’t exactly hold a poisonous needle to each of your necks and force you to watch my other videos … yet … so here’s a recap.

Last time we explored the idea of the Science of Discontent in relation to Baron Harkonnen and his keen understanding of desire, both in himself and in others. Being able to externalize this internal self-understanding is one of many ways that the Baron gestures at the Jungian archetypal “masculine” end of the dichotomy, in addition to his obsession with dominance and organization plus his reliance on Mentats, the ultimate in human computational ability. Remember, Jung used the terms “masculine” and “feminine” to indicate duality, not to assign specific roles or characteristics to any particular gender. You could just as easily think of them as left- or right-handed principles, or black and white, as in yin and yang. Central to Baron Harkonnen’s character is a wholesale rejection of all “feminine” principles, or a refusal to develop his “anima.” Though this gives him deep insight into the utility of masculine principles like law and order it leaves him completely ignorant of the virtues of intuition and fluidity, which ultimately leads to his demise. 

I mentioned last time that from a literary perspective the Baron was one of the principal villains of Dune because of this extreme “masculine” lop-sided-ness, and I indicated that the all-female Bene Gesserit symbolized the opposite extreme. I stand by that basic assessment, but now that we’re here it’s actually possible for me to call attention to the many layers of nuance that encase this enigmatic order of witches, truthsayers, and concubines. 

In reality it would probably be more accurate to say that the Bene Gesserit are an inversion of the Mentats Baron Harkonnen relies on so deeply, rather than the Baron himself. Both are emergent schools of thought that arose from the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad, a hundred-year conflict culminating in the destruction of all “thinking machines”...

GAIUS HELEN

“The Great Revolt took away a crutch. It forced human minds to develop. Schools were developed to train human talents.”

PAUL ATREIDES

“Bene Gesserit schools?”

GAIUS HELEN

(nodding) “We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function.

PAUL

“Politics.”

GAIUS HELEN

“Kull wahad!”

JESSICA

“I’ve not told him, Your Reverence.”

GAIUS HELEN

“You did that on remarkably few clues. Politics indeed.

(beat)

The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there could be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock - for breeding purposes.”

Gaius Helen Mohaim references the Spacing Guild here, rather than the School of Mentats directly, but in this sense one is an extension of the other. The Guild Navigator, likely having trained as a Mentat originally, utilizes internalized knowledge to exert external influence, imposing systems of understanding on the world around them. A process of materialization through comprehension and solidification by categorization. By thoroughly understanding reality they set its parameters and call it into being, collapsing the waveform of objective existence with such precision that no reasonable degree of uncertainty remains. In so doing, the task of prediction on the level of a pan-galactic economy or interstellar travel is brought from statistical impossibility to mainline computation in only a matter of heartbeats.

JESSICA

“The natural human’s an animal without logic. Your projections of logic onto all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness. You’re the embodiment of logic - a Mentat. Yet, your problem solutions are concepts that, in a very real sense, are projected outside yourself, there to be studied and rolled around, examined from all sides.”

By contrast, the Bene Gesserit emphasizes not the material universe but the space it exists within. She understands that she is the vessel in which reality is contained and therefore any shape she assumes is projected onto reality in turn. Thus she masters reality by mastering herself in an act of pre-determination, rather than prediction. Hence the Bene Gesserit obsession with separating people into “humans” and “animals:” the shape of the vessel determines the shape of its contents. We all contain an iteration of the universe internally that influences the way we interact with the universe externally. The Bene Gesserit understand reality as a macrocosmic entity of consensus that can be critically defined by the microcosms of its constituent parts, so it’s crucial those parts are of quality. 

As above, so below.

If that’s a little too esoteric, you could also think of Mentats as a symbol of economy and industry; hard science and material wealth. On the other end of the spectrum, the Bene Gesserit represent politics and religion; soft science and interconnectivity. Together they represent the institutions that reinforce the structure of the empire broadly. As the only ones capable of calculating the trajectories of celestial bodies hundreds of thousands of lightyears apart in their heads, the Spacing Guild has monopolized travel and therefore trade, becoming synonymous with it. Not to be outdone, the Bene Gesserit, who prefer more nuanced methods, have installed themselves all throughout the empire as the wives and concubines of noble and royal houses. By infiltrating the ruling class and assuming direct control over their very genetics they’ve become inexorably linked to this potent source of far-reaching generational influence and wealth.

Put another way, if the empire were a board game the Bene Gesserit control the shape of the board and the Spacing Guild writes all the rules of play. But now that all the pieces are set, one question remains: who’s going to play the banker?

The Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, more commonly known as CHOAM, is the emergent embodiment of the economy itself. The Spacing Guild may control the importing and exporting of goods and the Bene Gesserit may be as one with the owners of said goods, but the goods themselves owe their very existence to CHOAM. It is the stock market of the Imperium, the reference from which all material things derive their value. It is a monument to the superiority of the Imperium as it exists under the rule of House Corrino.

GAIUS HELEN

“What is CHOAM but a weathervane of our times? The Emperor and his friends now command fifty-nine point six-five percent of the CHOAM directorship’s votes. Certainly they smell profits, and likely as others smell those same profits his voting strength will increase. This is the pattern of history, girl.”

We’re not really going to get much into CHOAM and the economy in this video, but keep it in mind, I brought it up for more reason than to establish the stakes with which the Bene Gesserit operate. Just remember that the Bene Gesserit’s mission is nothing short of averting the total extinction of all mankind, which they believe is inevitable, in one way or another, without their intervention. They have every reason to take themselves very seriously and they have the perfect justification for whatever actions they deem necessary along the way. Decade over decade and century over century they infiltrate the key bloodlines, isolating one trait without introducing another, refining the genetic code for a very specific purpose.

GAIUS HELEN

“Have you ever seen truthtrance?”

PAUL

“No.”

GAIUS HELEN

“The drug’s dangerous, but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer’s gifted by the drug, she can look in many places in her memory - in her body’s memory. We look down so many avenues of the past … (sadly) but only feminine avenues. Yet there’s a place no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts.

PAUL

“Your Kwisatz Haderach?”

GAIUS HELEN

“Yes, the one who can be in many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach.”

So imagine the dismay, the utter horror, of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim, presumably the highest ranking Bene Gesserit alive and Emperor Corrino’s personal Truthsayer, when the would-be mother of this foretold messiah is born male, threatening the viability of not only that bloodline but also the separately maintained one meant to cross with it. It may seem ridiculous not to have a backup plan for situations like this, but remember: the Bene Gesserit can control the sex of their fetuses during pregnancy. Jessica and Duke Leto’s first child had to have been born male on purpose. And don’t forget, Jessica was trained by Gaius Helen Mohaim personally, so this reflects poorly on the Reverend Mother in more ways than one.

GAIUS HELEN

“Well Jessica, what have you to say for yourself?”

JESSICA

“Poor Paul…”

GAIUS HELEN

“I asked you a question, Jessica!”

JESSICA

(distracted) “What? Oh … What do you want me to say?”

GAIUS HELEN

(tone of cruel mimicry) “What do you want me to say? What do you want me to say?”

JESSICA

“So I had a son!” (aware she’s being goaded, letting her anger flare anyway)

GAIUS HELEN

“You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides.”

JESSICA

(pleading) “It meant so much to him!”

GAIUS HELEN

“And you thought in your pride that you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!”

JESSICA

“I sensed the possibility.” (lifting her chin)

GAIUS HELEN

(extended pause) “What’s done is done.”

Back in the Art of Ruling I said that Duke Leto Atreides may as well be the protagonist as far as the first hundred pages are concerned, but if you thought that title ought to go to Lady Jessica instead, you definitely wouldn’t be wrong. Dune takes the concept of a coming-of-age tale seriously, focusing first on Paul’s lack of agency in the beginning by dedicating entire chapters to plot development that occurs completely in his absence, sometimes substituting him with Leto but even more often with Jessica.

On a functional level this is because the story begins when Paul is just fifteen. In one respect this is perfect timing, it’s an age when having the world explained to you doesn’t feel contrived to the reader. In another respect, there are details that need to be established that Paul’s perspective alone just can’t provide. I’ve said it a few times throughout this series now, but in case this is your first time hearing it, Dune’s narrative is Paul’s post-hoc recollection of his early life, including the perspectives of several of his blood relatives, like his parents, Leto and Jessica, and even his grandfather, Baron Harkonnen. This is why the narration will sometimes wander between multiple characters in a scene, even multiple times in a paragraph. Each of those perspective shifts are included because they were deemed necessary by Narrator Paul for one reason or another. So even when Paul isn’t present in a scene his specter remains, looming just out of sight.

In fact, he could even be behind you, right now… but he isn’t, because that would be ridiculous.

Anyway. When Leto leads the chapter we’re typically treated to decisive statecraft and direct action. The Duke is a man of bravura, after all, and it says a lot about Paul’s respect for Leto as a ruler, but not so much what he felt about him as a dad. All of Leto’s scenes are laser-focused on diplomacy and politics, save a few very particular instances. The exact timeline in the early parts of the plot aren’t entirely clear but you could definitely get the feeling, as I did, that you, the reader, had spent just as much time with Leto during this time as Paul, his own Son, ever did.

Meanwhile, Jessica’s chapters are both more numerous and more revealing. Where Leto’s chapters are steeped in masculine themes like power dynamics and maintaining order, Jessica’s tend to be much more intimate in scope, often straying into full introspection. Rather than gliding from one problem to the next, resolving each with well-deserved confidence, Jessica often confronts just one person or problem at a time, taking in the experience and inspecting it with care, as is the Bene Gesserit way. This paints a much fuller picture of Jessica as a person because we have more space to explore her character on an emotional level.

JESSICA

“I vowed never to regret my decision.”

GAIUS HELEN

(sneering) “How noble. No regrets. We shall see when you’re a fugitive with a price on your head and every man’s hand turned against you to seek your life and the life of your son.”

JESSICA

(paling) “Is there no alternative?”

GAIUS HELEN

“Alternative? A Bene Gesserit should ask that?”

JESSICA

“I ask only what you see in the future with your superior abilities.”

GAIUS HELEN

“I see in the future what I’ve seen in the past. You well know the pattern of our affairs, Jessica.”

JESSICA

“I am Bene Gesserit. I exist only to serve.”

GAIUS HELEN

“Truth. And all we can hope for now is to prevent this from erupting into general conflagration, to salvage what we can of the key bloodlines.”

JESSICA

(fighting back tears) “I’ll pay for my own mistake.”

GAIUS HELEN

“And your son will pay with you.”

JESSICA

“I’ll shield him as well as I’m able.”

GAIUS HELEN

“Shield! You know well the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.”

Despite her anxiety, Jessica has actually prepared Paul extremely well for the destiny she has somewhat inadvertently foisted upon him. Having shown signs of possible aptitude as a Mentat, Paul was secretly trained in their preliminary curriculum from a very young age without being made aware of it. Typically a prospective Mentat will advance their training once they’re able to conclude on their own that this initial training is taking place, but again, Paul is a special case and this is only a means to an end.

Paul’s true training with Jessica is in the Bene Gesserit way, and to her credit, aside from being his mother, this is the literal purpose Jessica was bred for. Remember, if Paul had been born female it would have been Jessica’s responsibility to prepare him to be the mother of the Kwisatz Haderach, and this fact would have been just as carefully considered as any other traits the Bene Gesserit were attempting to converge into her. There could truly be no better person to initiate Paul, if she really did in fact “sense the possibility.” For one thing, as both a Bene Gesserit and Baron Harkonnen’s daughter, Jessica’s emotional intelligence is formidable, a fact that makes her particularly skillful in the art of Voice. In some ways this is the single most effective weapon she provides Paul, to the point that his own mastery of it becomes something of a trademark later in his life for those who know how to recognize it.

Okay, so this is normally the part of the video where I get more serious and share one of my many Dune conspiracy theories, like “Leto is manipulating you,” or “Feyd-Rautha is one of the Baron’s victims.” Last time that got a little intense so this time I just want to take a few minutes to hard pivot into a quick pedantic cul-de-sac about Voice and how every time I see it represented in media the only thing it ever convinces me to do is groan.

No but really, I get they wanna use an effect to indicate to the audience that there’s space magic afoot or whatever, but the process of taking someone’s register and adjusting one’s tone and cadence as described in the books suggests that Voice could sound like anything from an irresistible request to a damning rebuke, depending on the target and the circumstances. So, like, sometimes it’s appropriate to use the weird shouty witch filter with the blown out bass, but surely not every time, right? And, I mean, certainly not for a command like “Take out your knife and drive it into your--”

No, no, sorry, I already said no extended universe stuff. Moving on.

The point is, the influence of Voice is subtle, not a literal spell being cast on someone to force them to go slack-jawed and do your bidding. In the vast majority of cases the target of Voice is completely unaware that anything special is being done because the trick of Voice is to listen to how a person talks - their tone and pace, which words they choose and emphasize - then reverse-engineer the pattern of speech that would be most effective against them. Again, the Bene Gesserit alter themselves to affect reality, perhaps in this instance through a voice that happens to be eerily similar to the one your mother would use when you were in trouble, or the pleading of your lover under duress. Whatever’s most likely to trigger the right reflexive action from your body before your conscious mind can stop it.

When you slap an over-produced filter over an actor being directed to contort their face in rage as they loudly shout commands into an emotionless zombie’s face it runs completely contrary to the notion that they’re a secret society controlling events from behind the scenes. Almost no one outside the Bene Gesserit knows that Voice exists and there’s a general awareness that they have superior control of their bodies, but not to the extent that they can selectively edit their offspring at will. The epithet ”witch” is well-earned and almost certainly intentional, considering secrets and mystery are both core “feminine” attributes, according to Jung. If it was well-known they had these capabilities they would never have been trusted enough to infiltrate the Imperium all the way through its utmost echelons of power like they have.

Aside from all that, making Voice seem more explicitly like magic takes away from the fact that for Paul and Jessica in particular Voice isn’t a special power they have, it’s a skill enhanced by their shared lineage with Baron Harkonnen. It’s traits passed down to them that they have learned to use under a different context, in this case with the Baron’s knack for the desires of others. A fittingly subtle and extremely clever hint at an evolving cycle of abuse that gets completely lost in adaptation under layers upon layers of migraine sounds.

But I digress.

Understandably the Bene Gesserit firmly grasp the role of genetics and the intricacies of weaponized generational trauma, but what they don’t seem to account for is that internalization itself can alter one as well. It seems reasonable to conclude that Leto was selected to forge the next link in the breeding program’s chain at least in part for his charisma and the way he inspires devotion, not just his proximity to power. It would have been Jessica’s task to collect these traits and refine them into the Kwisatz Haderach’s ongoing lineage. But this refinement doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it occurs in Jessica.

Jessica knows that Leto deeply desires a son, not just for the vanity of House Atreides but out of a need to conclude the unresolved trauma between himself and his own late father. She inherently understands that Leto may be a good man, but he has the capacity for greatness if he can only step out from beneath the shadow of the Old Duke, a man that Jessica hated. If she did indeed “sense the possibility” that Paul could be both the Kwisatz Haderach and the catalyst for Leto’s own culmination into a better man, can you really blame her for taking the chance?

For their part, the Bene Gesserit would not forget this moment, though it’s arguable whether they drew the proper conclusions from it. Regardless, even as late as Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune more than four-and-a-half thousand years later, there is a term used when a Bene Gesserit defies her orders and dares to fall in love: the Jessica Problem.

GAIUS HELEN

“I must be leaving soon.”

JESSICA

“Must you?”

GAIUS HELEN

“Jessica, girl, I wish I could stand in your place and take your sufferings, but each of us must make our own path.”

JESSICA

“I know.”

GAIUS HELEN

”What you did, Jessica, and why you did it - we both know. But kindness forces me to tell you there’s little chance your lad will be the Bene Gesserit Totality. You mustn’t let yourself hope too much.”

JESSICA

“You make me feel like a little girl again - reciting my first lesson. ‘Humans must never submit to animals.’”

(dry sob)

“I’ve been so lonely.”

GAIUS HELEN

“It should be one of the tests. Humans are almost always lonely.”

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PRINCESS IRULAN

“There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides died a meteor streaked across the skies of his ancestral palace on Caladan.”

As the saying goes, a boy becomes a man the day his father dies. For Paul, his time as a passive observer of events comes to an abrupt end during the Harkonnen siege of Arrakeen following Leto’s demise. Newly imbued with agency after a harrowing escape from his would-be executioners, he emerges from the crushing sands like a baptism into his stark new reality. Paul’s character development can finally begin now in earnest, even as Jessica’s own development begins to take a turn.

After the Atreides arrive on Arrakis the Bene Gesserit pretext of politics falls away completely, making way for the trappings of religion. This planet has been under the watchful eye of the Missionaria Protectiva, the social engineering branch of the Bene Gesserit. By taking advantage of the patterns of human behavior and belief they seed a population with specific superstitions and prophecies that make it more susceptible to further manipulation at scale. This belief system, the Panoplia Propheticus, exists alongside and acts in concert with the Breeding Program so that once the Kwisatz Haderach has been produced, the imperium’s citizens will be fully primed to accept him with nothing less than an intense religious fervor as he systematically fulfills all their ancient “prophecies” one after the other. If Jessica’s secondary purpose was to educate her progeny in the Bene Gesserit way, this is the curriculum she was born to impart.

IRULAN

“With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant-legends through the Missionaria Protectiva came to its full fruition. The wisdom of seeding the known universe with a prophecy pattern for the protection of B.G. personnel has long been appreciated, but never have we seen a condition-ut-extremis with more ideal mating of person and preparation. The prophetic legends had taken on Arrakis even to the extent of adopted labels (including Reverend Mother, canto and respondu, and most of the Shari-a panoplia propheticus). And it is generally accepted now that the Lady Jessica’s latent abilities were grossly underestimated.”

Jessica’s additional involvement in the Missionaria Protectiva goes so deep that it seems likely to have been integrated into her upbringing her entire life, never distinguished from the standard Bene Gesserit education so that she would most effectively pass it along in full. Shortly after coming to Arrakis she’s able to deftly navigate a religious test laid out for her by the Shadout Mapes, her first hint that the Fremen religion is eerily similar to her schooling. As if the people here were only given the surface conclusions of the in-depth lessons she grew up on and none of the deeper insights contained within. These insights are nonetheless well-planted, though, as even Paul inadvertently stumbles into this behavior when he chooses his Fremen name, Muad’Dib. This is framed as an early indication of his latent potential, an understanding that this is a significant choice without understanding why, but if this instinct is deeply ingrained into his upbringing, then that outcome was essentially inevitable, rather than unique. Pre-determined, even.

But it’s before all that, when Paul and Jessica first set out into the desert seeking the Fremen as allies, that Paul’s first challenge of adulthood is set. Jessica is buried under a sudden shift in the sand and has to enter a state of bindu suspension to avoid suffocating until Paul can dig her out. To Paul this is his mother’s symbolic death, his true first moment of agency in the universe with absolutely no one to come to his aid. He successfully rescues her, but the experience of doing so without her remains and Paul advances further into the trials of adulthood with greater confidence. A positive outcome - by which I mean a productive outcome - driven by a rapid assessment of the situation and immediate action.

Now consider this:

JESSICA

“The mind can go either direction under stress - toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness on the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”

Under the framework of duality, the negative and unconscious are both considered feminine principles, being abstract and conceptual rather than measurable features of objective reality. Making the wording of this Bene Gesserit axiom absolutely pregnant with meaning. Despite being pulled free of the sandfall, Jessica still remains in an emotional suspension, her character development held in stasis by grief. Her responsibility to her son and unborn daughter drive her to continue living, but internally she recedes more and more from the cruelties of life with each passing moment in a desperate attempt to avoid confronting her Duke’s death. Her instinct to identify with a collective beyond herself as a coping mechanism is called “deindividuation,” a drive to disassociate from her personal pain by identifying with the needs of a greater whole, to lose oneself in a crowd.

This urge to deindividuate is, once again, an essentially inevitable outcome when Jessica’s training is taken into account. Though she gives every indication that she’s at least not fully aware of what she is agreeing to or the ramifications of her actions to her unborn child, she still rushes headlong into the Fremen Water of Life ritual with the dying Reverend Mother of Sietch Tab’r, as if she somehow understands the ego death it represents instinctively.

“Experiences began to unroll before Jessica. It was like a lecture strip in a subliminal training projector at the Bene Gesserit school … but faster … blindingly faster.

Yet … distinct.

She knew each experience as it happened: there was a lover - virile, bearded, with the Fremen eyes, and Jessica saw his strength and tenderness, all of him in one blink-moment, through the Reverend Mother’s memory.

There was no time now to think of what this might be doing to the daughter fetus, only time to accept and record. The experiences poured in on Jessica - birth, life, death - important matters and unimportant, an outpouring of single-view time.

Why should a fall of sand from a clifftop stick in the memory? She asked herself.

Too late, Jessica saw what was happening: the old woman was dying and, in dying, pouring her experiences into Jessica’s awareness as water is poured into a cup. The other mote faded back into pre-birth awareness as Jessica watched it. And, dying-in-conception, the old Reverend Mother left her life in Jessica’s memory with one last sighing blur of words

‘I’ve been a long time waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Here is my life.’

There it was, encapsuled, all of it.

Even the moment of death.

I am now a Reverend Mother, Jessica realized.

In her eagerness to disassociate from her pain Jessica accepts the life and memories of Reverend Mother Ramallo and all who came before her, flooding her awareness with untold multitudes. Thus she would drown out her sorrow by becoming a Reverend Mother herself, a living embodiment of the Collective Unconscious. Jessica has now become the Bene Gesserit, both literally and figuratively; a fragment containing the whole.

Dune’s plot continues on but Jessica’s involvement quickly dwindles from here as its events unfold. Having begun the story in soft competition for the role of protagonist she rapidly finds herself in the opposite role, a challenge to Paul’s intention to circumvent the bloody inevitability he foresees in his rise to power, only to then settle meekly into the backdrop of Paul’s narrative as it races to its climactic conclusion. 

By the end of Dune Jessica’s character arc may seem unsatisfying, due in no small part to the fact that it’s incomplete, only half of the greater trajectory of her life. In order to discuss the rest, we’ll need to jump past the events of the first sequel, Dune: Messiah, and dig into the third entry in this series, Children of Dune. If you’re trying to avoid spoilers, this is your stop. As usual, I highly recommend reading this series and then coming back to finish the video with full context, so go do that now and I’ll see you next time when we finally circle all the way back around to Paul again.

IRULAN

“You have loved Caladan

And lamented its lost host--

But pain discovers

New lovers cannot erase

Those forever ghost.”

From the moment she knew for certain that her Duke was dead Jessica’s sole motivation in life came to be Paul’s ascendency, both as Kwisatz Haderach and as Emperor. Blinded by grief she both couldn’t and wouldn’t process, she cast everything aside in pursuit of this ultimate goal. Paul’s success would give her losses meaning, justify her questionable decisions, martyrize the consequences.

Retribution. Vindication. Absolution.

Yet in the face of triumph Jessica’s spirit is disquieted. The inner turmoil remains. There is no relief. With Paul’s regime in place and his Jihad underway, Jessica flees the grave of her Duke and the conceit of her children for the comforts of their ancestral home on Caladan. Taking Gurney Halleck as her lover in private, she remains immersed in this idealized form of her desired past for the next twenty years.

During this time Paul and his army of Fremen rage through the empire like a plague, imposing Muad’Dib’s new order upon the universe, defining the parameters of the Imperium according to his vision. Or rather, according to his prescience. Paul and Alia soon become painstakingly familiar with the magnitude of the decisions made in their names and by them personally; the enormity of accepting their positions at the apex of a theocracy enforced all across the known universe. The inescapable matrix of predestination that imprisons them both and the irresistible current of prescience that drags Paul into the inevitable future cannot be ignored, yet Jessica remains on Caladan.

Time stretches on and Paul is troubled by his detailed grasp of what will be and what that means for those he loves most. He delays the inevitable again and again, and again. It soon becomes clear that he’s deeply troubled - irritable and constantly lost in thought - providing the perfect opportunity for the execution of a coup so thoroughly embedded that even his legal wife, Princess Irulan, is intimately involved. As is Gaius Helen Mohaim herself, having taken a personal interest in Paul’s demise. Amid these troubling circumstances the Tleilaxu offer an ominous gift: the resurrected corpse of his swordmaster, who now calls himself Hayt.  The ghosts of Paul’s past resurface one by one to haunt him, but Jessica remains on Caladan.

Chani, Paul’s first and only love, has finally gotten pregnant after having struggled to do so for years. Unfortunately, her many fertility treatments and the spice-rich diet she adopted to finally conceive have weakened her physically and a difficult pregnancy is expected. Paul’s prescience begins to fail him at key moments and shortly before Chani’s due date the capital complex suffers a terrorist attack using illegal atomic weaponry. Paul is blind to this assault ahead of time, receiving no warning of it via prescience, and blinded by it in the aftermath, losing his eyes to the lingering effects of the radiation. Chani gives birth to twins - surprising Paul yet again - but loses her own life in the process, as he expected. In his utter despair and crushing grief, Paul walks into the desert and lets it take him, rejecting his destiny and the cost it imposes on himself and his loved ones. Alia, preborn but still only 15 years old, inherits the Imperium as steward until Paul’s newborn children are of age. Even still, Jessica remains on Caladan. 

And then the Bene Gesserit learn that Paul's twins are preborn. 

By this time Jessica has fully returned to the Sisterhood consciously, not just metaphorically in the sense that she had disassociated from her trauma. She is a true believer, her position reinforced by guilt and a sense of personal duty, if not familial responsibility. Her daughter is almost certainly possessed by one of the multitudes of her inner lives - an Abomination - and now her grandchildren may be under threat of it as well. Far from their original goal of producing the perpetuity of humanity, they struggle with the reality that their efforts may have accelerated its extinction instead.

Thus Jessica finally returns to Dune, to confront her family and herself.

IRULAN

“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.”

It’s been nine years since Alia took control of the Regency and she’s been possessed by her grandfather, Baron Harkonnen, almost from the start. By now the signs are recognizable to anyone familiar with them and Jessica spots them immediately. As expected, relations between Jessica and Alia are openly antagonistic, both unable to set aside their personal complications and connect with the other. Jessica struggles to accept her role in Alia’s situation, having not allowed herself to come to terms with the events that led to her decisions, or indeed the decisions themselves. She sees her daughter from the Bene Gesserit perspective, a desperate last-ditch effort to correct a prior mistake, destined only to be an even greater mistake still.

Regardless, Jessica has taken her first step along a path she had abandoned before Alia was even born, but it will be some time yet before she’s able to confront her daughter’s trauma in earnest. In the meantime, she has yet to meet her grandchildren, and it’s fair to say that she couldn’t have possibly expected the reception she receives, nor the road upon which she would be set as a result.

She first meets with her granddaughter, Ghanima, and is immediately challenged by the young girl’s extremely intimate understanding of her grandmother’s deepest self, her every private memory and experience. To center herself, Jessica recites the Litany Against Fear privately to herself:

JESSICA

(internal monologue) “I shall not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

GHANIMA ATREIDES

“It helps at times.”

(beat)

“The Litany, I mean.”

Despite knowing intellectually that Ghanima has unlimited access to all of her memories and experiences - up to and including the point of Paul’s conception - Jessica is emotionally unprepared for this fact. At once the ultimate test of her integrity and the most penetrating violation of her privacy imaginable. There’s no point in attempting to conceal her innermost thoughts and feelings from her granddaughter because she can read them in an instant with the casual familiarity of personal recollection.

With each character we’ve talked about so far there’s been a word that emerges to describe them on a thematic level. Paul is You, for example, because he’s our audience surrogate. Of course, Duke Leto is associated with bravura, obsessed as he is with appearing effortlessly competent. Baron Harkonnen is an embodiment of desire, or even possession, if you’ll excuse the pun. As we come to understand Jessica as Ghanima does, we start to become aware that her association would be allow or permit, especially in the context of herself:

JESSICA

(narrating)

“Jessica allowed herself a regal nod before accepting.” 

“[She] permitted herself to admire [Paul’s] competence,” 

“And she permitted herself to face fully the significance of this other child growing within her, to see her own motives in permitting the conception.”

What makes Jessica such an exemplary Bene Gesserit is her bottomless capacity for self-regulation, the single-mindedness with which she dedicates herself. It is her most prominent feature, for better or worse. But when confronted quite literally by herself she parries this ultimate test of integrity and offers a masterful riposte:

JESSICA

(narrating) 

”On impulse, Jessica put aside her ingrained emotional masks, knowing them to be of little use here, barriers to communication. Not since those loving moments with her Duke had she lowered these barriers, and she found the action both relief and pain. There remained facts which no curse or prayer or litany could wash from existence. Flight would not leave such facts behind. They could not be ignored. Elements of Paul’s vision had been rearranged and the times had caught up with his children. They were a magnet in the void; evil and all the sad misuses of power collected around them.”

(inner dialogue, to GHANIMA) 

“I wish you to see my fear.”

GHANIMA

(inner dialogue, responding to JESSICA) 

“Now I know you love me.”

Jessica meets her greatest challenge yet and returns to Arrakis to confront the consequences of her actions, a reckoning she’s been avoiding for more than a third of her life. It becomes clear that none of her defenses are adequate to protect her - perhaps they never were - and when she relieves herself of them she is immediately met with compassion and understanding:

JESSICA

“I should never have left here. It was cowardly of me.”

GHANIMA

“Why do you blame yourself? You had reached a limit. I know that. Leto knows it. Even Alia may know it.”

As Jessica lost her individuality more and more to the collective identity of the Bene Gesserit she began to take on their collective responsibility as well, her personal guilt becoming indistinguishable from the culpability of the whole. It can’t be denied that she played a key role in the Breeding Plan and the culmination of the Missionaria Protectiva on Arrakis, but to pin more than ninety generations of eugenics and thought reform on a galactic scale to any single person would be ludicrous. 

Correction: pinning ninety-plus generations of eugenics and thought reform on any single human person would be ludicrous. Don’t worry, we’ll get to him too. If you know, you know. If you don’t, maybe go read God-Emperor of Dune.

Anyway, this is exactly the weight that Jessica had brought to bear upon herself, as if she personally were to blame for the whole of her Sisterhood’s sins. Finally free of that overbearing weight she can now take on her legitimate responsibilities and begin to progress as a person once again. It reminds me of a legend in which the Buddha meets a monk who has spent thirty years in meditation. The monk explains that in this time he has learned how to walk on water and demonstrates by walking back and forth across a nearby lake. Unimpressed, the Buddha tells the monk he’s wasted his time learning to do what a bridge or boat could achieve more easily when he surely could have reached enlightenment through meditation on deeper insights in less time. Both Jessica and the water-walking monk spend decades in meditation, yet they waste it all by avoiding deep introspection. As a convert to Zen Buddhism, Frank Herbert would have almost certainly known this legend in some form, so it’s not a stretch to imagine this similarity is intentional.

True to Jung’s principles, Ghanima (the female twin) provides Jessica with the gentle prodding necessary to encourage an emotional breakthrough, allowing Jessica to come to a degree of self-forgiveness and take her first steps forward. Ghanima addresses her mental health and internal balance, those quintessential components that come together to fundamentally define Jessica’s conceptions of reality. 

Having become attuned to herself once more she continues on to her meeting with Leto (the male twin) to set out on the, ah, golden pathway toward redemption. In the masculine way he lays out his predictions for the movements of their enemies and sets forth a plan to counter it. He tells Jessica that Alia intends to kidnap her and send her to House Corrino to pin the crime on the former emperor’s grandson and heir, Farad’n. She hopes to rid herself of both Jessica and Farad’n in the process, perceiving them to be equal threats to her power but failing to consider that they could ally against her instead. Invoking his grandfather and namesake for emphasis, Leto II reveals his plan to Jessica:

LETO ATREIDES II

“You will allow yourself to be abducted.”

JESSICA

“But--”

LETO II

“I’m not asking for discussion on this point. You will allow it. Think of this as a command from your Duke. You’ll see the purpose when it’s done. You’re going to confront a very interesting student.

Some actions have an end but no beginning; some begin but do not end. It all depends on where the observer is standing.”

If it seems like I took a little time with Ghanima and completely rushed past Leto II to get to Farad’n, congratulations! I did. There’s no point in talking about Paul’s son in detail until we’ve first come back around to Paul himself, and what I’ve mentioned about him so far should be all you really need to follow along as far as this video is concerned. But don’t worry, I can - and will - happily talk about Leto and the Golden Path for hours, I just have to finish talking about Paul for hours first.

So anyway, back to Farad’n.

In case you were wondering why it would be relevant that Farad’n is the former emperor’s heir, don’t forget that his aunt, Irulan, is Paul’s legal wife. If Paul’s bloodline should fail, Farad'n's claim to the throne is suddenly legitimate again, so House Corrino has every incentive to scheme for Leto and Ghanima’s untimely demise. In fact, Wensicia, Farad’n’s mother, has already set events in motion behind his back that she hopes will ensure that exact outcome. 

Farad’n himself, just shy of eighteen years old, is conflicted about his desires for the throne. Like many young men his age he has a wide array of interests he’s anxious to pursue in life and he recognizes that the responsibilities of rulership simply wouldn’t allow him the latitude necessary to do so. In this way, he’s told, he’s very much like his grandfather, and this had ultimately been Shaddam IV’s downfall. He’s torn between a duty to his house and a desire to live life on his own terms, suppressed as he is by his overbearing mother’s constant scheming for power in his name. It’s not so much that he’s uninterested in the throne as he isn’t committed to taking on the role of governance, hasn’t considered the qualities a ruler should possess, and therefore he obviously hasn’t internalized those qualities for himself either.

As a certain Preacher from Arrakis put it when brought to interpret Farad’n dreams:

PREACHER

“You could become admirable. But now you are surrounded by those who do not seek moral justifications, by advisors who are strategy-oriented. You are young and strong and tough, but you lack a certain advanced training by which your character might evolve. This is sad because you have weaknesses whose dimensions I have described.”

In response the young “Prince” can only find himself somewhat disturbed by the Preacher’s preoccupation with what Farad’n considers “discredited concepts” like morality and social goals. “These were myths to put beside belief in an upward movement of evolution.” So it’s safe to say that Farad’n does not have the greatest grasp on the Art of Ruling, but he could:

PREACHER

“You’ve given no thought to the kind of society you might prefer. You do not consider the hopes of your subjects. Even the form of the Imperium which you seek has little shape in your imaginings. Your eye is upon the power, not upon its subtle uses and its perils. Your future is filled, thus, with manifest unknowns…”

In short order Wencisia’s scheming has come to fruition and though it’s reported that Ghanima survived the attack by trained assassin-tigers, Leto was not so lucky. Assassination attempts are a reality that every major house’s members must accept, and Farad’n is no exception, but he also understands the underlying implication others might not allow themselves to consider.

WENCISIA CORRINO

“You have responsibilities! What about all of the people who depend on you?”

FARAD’N CORRINO

“Yes, I understand about them, but I find some of the things done in my name distasteful.”

WENCISIA

“Dis … How can you say such a thing? We do what any Great House would do in promoting its own fortunes!”

FARAD’N

“Do you? I think you’ve been a bit gross. No! Don’t interrupt me. If I’m to be an Emperor, then you’d better learn how to listen to me. Do you think I cannot read between the lines? How were those tigers trained?”

(long, uncomfortable silence)

“I see.”

Accepting the reality of assassination attempts is one thing, but Farad’n demonstrates a keen insight and attentiveness that’s particularly well developed for his age. Notably he understands that these tigers would have to have been conditioned to the specific details of their intended prey with … live bait … a fact already demonstrated to the reader within the first few chapters. Farad’n and Wencisia already have only the barest hint of what might be considered a “relationship” in the first place and now Wencisia has stepped well outside her bounds, just in time for a more than suitable replacement mother-figure to arrive.

Once on Salusa Secundus, the Corrino homeworld, Jessica’s timeliness can’t be ignored. It quickly becomes clear that by her being there House Corrino has walked into Alia’s trap, easy prey on which to pin Jessica’s abduction. They realize that if they kill her this will play into Alia’s hands, and as the apparent instigators of this conflict their side of the story is less likely to be believed by default. Jessica, however, offers an alternative: If House Corrino allows her freedom of the planet to prove she isn’t a prisoner she will announce publicly that she is on Salusa Secundus by choice, to take over Farad’n’s education. In exchange, however, Farad’n must denounce Wencisia and banish her.

This is important because Wencisia and her servants are the advisors the Preacher referred to previously, the ones who don’t consider the moral implications of their actions because the ends will always justify the means. On a deeper level this also represents her figurative death, much like when Jessica was buried under the sandfall back on Arrakis with Paul. Farad’n, previously noted to be almost eighteen, is right on the cusp of adulthood, and these are his first steps. Though Jessica can’t guarantee his place on a throne like the other offers spread out before him, she can provide him with something he truly desires: intuition, insight, mystery … to be taught as Paul had once been, in the Bene Gesserit way.

But if Jessica’s stagnation is a result of her own regression into the Bene Gesserit, why would training Farad’n in their curriculum be the right answer? 

Because the Bene Gesserit have made a secret offer to Farad’n as well, to usurp Alia by marrying him to Ghanima. Publicly, this would unite House Atreides and House Corrino under one banner, and thus the Imperium as well. Secretly - because of course - this is just a soft reboot on their Breeding Program.

Farad’n is a relative on his father’s side of Count Hasimir Fenring, whom you might remember as Baron Harkonnen’s stuttering superior from the opening of The Science of Discontent. At the very end of Dune Paul discovers that the Count was a “near-Kwisatz Haderach,” but for a flaw in his genetics that also rendered him infertile. In the original context it explains why Paul is unable to foresee the conclusion of his showdown with House Harkonnen and Emperor Shaddam IV, since one person with prescience can’t see or predict events near another in time or space, even if their prescience is limited. Now it means that Farad’n’s own genes carry more than a little of those key traits as well, absent the flaws introduced by Count Fenring, since Farad’n isn’t his direct descendant. The Bene Gesserit are once again trying to produce another Kwisatz Haderach, and Jessica’s offer means she’s actively working against them once again, as she did originally with Paul by teaching him their way.

JESSICA

“Stare at your extended hands, first the palms and then the backs. Examine the fingers, front and back. (pause) Do it.

Imagine your hands aging. They must grow very old in your eyes. Very, very old. Notice how dry the skin …”

FARAD’N

“They don’t change!”

JESSICA

(patiently)

“If you demand it of your senses, your hands will change.”

What Jessica is hitting at here isn’t just fantasy novel bullshit, she’s reaffirming that the Bene Gesserit change reality by changing themselves, by altering their perspectives, understanding that every system is only stable relative to itself at any given time:

JESSICA

“This is the perspective which you create with your own belief, and beliefs can be manipulated by imagination. You’ve learned only a limited way of looking at the universe. Now you must make the universe your own creation. This will permit you to harness any relative stability to your own uses, to whatever you are capable of imagining.”

Or, as Farad’n himself puts it about a week later:

FARAD’N

“It moves of itself!

(beat)

I saw my hand shrink down to chubby fists, and I remembered! They were my hands when I was an infant. I remembered being an infant, but it was … a clearer memory. I was reorganizing my old memories!”

JESSICA

(affected by FARAD’N’S infectious excitement)

“Very good. And what happened when your hands became old?”

FARAD’N

“My … mind was … sluggish. I felt an ache in my back…”

JESSICA

“You’ve learned a most important lesson. Do you know what it is?”

FARAD’N

“My mind controls my reality.”

(pause)

“My mind controls my reality!”

Jessica functions for Farad’n in much the same way that Gaius Helen Mohaim did for Paul by administering the gom jabbar, but in many ways her own version is inverted. 

For one thing, Gaius Helen goes so far as to admit to Paul’s face that she must have wanted him to fail, barely bothering to veil her disapproval from him. Even without prior context, her treatment of Paul in chapters one and three are borderline hostile, and subsequent readings only take on a more and more venomous tone as you realize the utter depth of her loathing for everything he represents, the underlying motivation for her hope that Paul would give her any excuse to kill him where he stands.

By contrast, Jessica is patient and compassionate in her dealings with Farad’n. Despite the natural inclination to antagonism their perspectives may have, she can’t help but compare him favorably to Paul. Rather than playing on his suspicions and doubts with cryptic aphorisms and platitudes, Jessica encourages Farad’n and guides him gently to his conclusions, allowing him to make them in his own time and in his own way, challenging him where necessary to illuminate his path. Under Jessica’s tutelage Farad’n does become as admirable as the Preacher had predicted, rooted firmly in the masculine with a core of the feminine nested within. Evidence that not every cycle of abuse is destined to endlessly echo into the future unabated because we each have the endless capacity within us to alter reality by altering ourselves in accordance with our own internalization of our personal Science of Religion.

LETO II

“The child who refuses to travel in the father’s harness, this is the symbol of man’s most unique capability. ‘I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father’s rules or even believe everything my father believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.’”