Sometimes feared, often distrusted, always respected, Dune‘s Bene Gesserit Order are among the most mysterious factions in the sprawling drama that is Dune. Audiences are first introduced to the Sisterhood through Lady Jessica, wife to Duke Leto Atreides and father of the story’s main character, Paul Atreides. Outside the story, they’re most famous for their “Litany Against Fear,” a mantra meant to give one clarity of mind in stressful situations. Within the story, they are some of the most enigmatic and powerful players in a narrative filled with powerful and capable people.
The most well-known scene giving a hint of the order and their ways is with Dune‘s infamous Pain Box, a rite of passage given to all potential inductees into the Sisterhood. They must endure intense pain without speaking, screaming, flinching, or moving at all, or they die. As cruel and barbaric as their methods may be, this enigmatic order has far more altruistic goals than it appears, and more than have the means to achieve them.
Who Are Dune’s Strange Order Of Bene Gesserit?
Put simply, the Bene Gesserit are an all-female order of priestesses, spies, politicians, scientists, generally very smart and capable people. Nobody is sure where they first came from or when their strange abilities first emerged, but what is known is that they first rose to galactic importance following the Butlerian Jihad (a war 10,000 years prior to the events of Dune). Always in the shadows, talented Bene Gesserit will often serve as attaches to prominent houses of the empire, usually in advisory roles, like Lady Jessica was to House Atreides before officially marrying into it.
The Bene Gesserit Order, sometimes also called simply The Sisterhood, carefully controls who they allow into their society. While induction commonly occurs along bloodlines, this isn’t always the case; many members do not come from Order families, and not all children of Bene Gesserit are inducted. It is important to note that with only one exception, all Bene Gesserit give birth to female children. Through means never fully explained, women of the Sisterhood can control the biological sex of their children, choosing to only raise daughters. In general, they serve a similar role to the Maesters of Game of Thrones.
The Bene Gesserit’s Powers Explained
Often called witches, the Bene Gesserit are renowned for their strange abilities, beyond simply persuasive speaking and skilled diplomacy. These abilities seem like magic, but are simply incredibly advanced observation, awareness, and bodily control. Perhaps the most famous of these abilities is The Voice. By targeting specific nerves in a person’s ear, a skilled Bene Gesserit can command nearly anyone to do anything, in a form of mind control similar to the Jedi mind trick. All members of the Sisterhood are trained in how to resist The Voice, but others have trained in this as well or found ways to circumvent it. Baron Harkonnen employs guards who are deaf as a means of ensuring immunity to this tactic.
Less well known is their martial art known as the Weirding Way. It involves shifting one’s perspective of space-time in order to move with superhuman speed. The key axiom of the Weirding Way is “my mind affects my reality.” Possibly due to the limitations of the human mind, this can only be done over short distances. But Bene Gesserit combine this ability with a style of pressure point attacks called Prana Bindu, which can render an opponent temporarily (or permanently) paralyzed.
Finally, there are Bene Gesserit Truthsayers. These are members of the order who can listen to a person speak and immediately tell if they are lying. While this appears to be a form of mind reading more at home in an X-Men comic than a sci-fi epic, it is in fact highly advanced body language observation. Through minute changes in facial expression and tone, quirks of eyes, even smelling the sweat from a person’s skin, a skilled Bene Gesserit can infer the truthfulness of any statement and is never wrong. Only others trained in this art are known to be able to deceive the Truthsayers, and given their fearsome reputation, only a fool would try.
What Do Dune’s Bene Gesserit Want?
Even though they claim not to be a religious order, the Bene Gesserit believe that a messiah known as the Kwisatz Haderach will one day come and bring about an ascendance of humanity to some higher stage (the name Kwisatz Haderach translates to Shortening Of The Way). They’ve been working behind the scenes for millennia to pave the way for this to happen, guiding humanity along the path of insight and stability until he is born. The reason the order is all female is because their prophecies say the Kwisatz will be male, and so for a Bene Gesserit to birth a male child is the height of presumption, believing that their child will be The One.
This is why Lady Jessica has such a strained relationship with her Sisterhood. She chose to give birth to a son simply out of love for her husband; Duke Leto (played by Moon Knight‘s Oscar Isaac) wanted an heir, and she wanted to give him one. But the Order knew that a son born to a Bene Gesserit would be their messiah whether Jessica intended that or not. The Sisterhood had intended to bring about their messiah a generation later, so Jessica kicking it off sooner than expected incurred the ire of the order’s leadership. Even so, Paul proved to be every bit the capable individual the Kwisatz Haderach was prophesied to be, and raises questions as to whether they would ever have been able to control him the way they wished. And Paul himself even theorizes that there’s nothing inherently special about him and the only reason he is a messiah is because everyone around him believes him to be.
Follow Us
