Lecture #8: Messiah Figures -- Dune

Course: Science Fiction & Religion

Lecture #8: Messiah Figures -- Dune

Book cover of

INTRODUCTION

The concept of a Messiah, or Christ in Greek, who would come at a crucial time, (usually the end of time), to set all things right and bring righteousness and justice comes from The Aryan peoples who settled the Iranian plateau and spread out into India and elsewhere.

It is with the Zoroastrian religion founded by Zarathustra or Zoroaster (grk) in the 7th cent. BCE that the idea began to flower. Zoroaster developed a monotheistic faith based on belief in Ahura Mazda, the one true God. However, he had an adversary, Ahiramin who was virtually his equal and evil. A dualistic religion of light vs. dark, or good vs. evil was the result. How can Ahura Mazda win? by enough people choosing the good.

As part of this Aryan heritage, other lesser deities were still kept. Among these was MITHRA, god of the sun (birthday, Dec. 25). He became popular in the roman empire and was believed by his followers to be the one who would come back and set everything right at the end of time. It is thus from Iran that this idea spread into the western religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Also from this Aryan tradition comes, in Hindu thought, the idea of Vishnu, the chief deity of North India, who would incarnate at the end of time as Kalkin the righteous judge who would appear in the heavens on a white horse at the end of the Kali Yuga (the one we're in now) to bring justice and righteousness and judge everyone. It is from this idea that the book Lord of Light draws its premise:

SHOW: After Dune Clip @ 26 min

Movie poster for the 1984 film

day messiah Figure must undergo a test to see if they are truly the chosen, or anointed one. Jesus underwent The temptations, others have to also, there is a clip from a Bab. 5 episode in which one such gigane is tested.

SHOW: Clip, 17:30 - called " The Inquisitor

DISCUSSION NOTES: Marduk: overcome aps and Tiamat, Buddha-overcome Navar 4 daughters

DUNE; THEOLOGY

Frank Herbert deliberately set out to design a future which included religion as one of its most important aspects. Dune, probably more than any other science fiction, has religion as an extremely important part of the development thru its six novels. We could actually do a whole course just on these books.

Dune has religion stemming from ecology, from drug induced states, religion used for power (the bene Gesserit and the spacing guild), religion developed from oppression and from the uncontrollable (the freman), religion as fulfillment of expectations, and religion as revulsion (the Butlarian Jihad, the gholas, and face dancers).

I will attempt to deal with all these aspects.

TIME: We now live it the year 14,206 B.G. (before guild) and the events in the first book of Dune take place in the year 10,192 A.G. Thus we are dealing with events some 24,000 years in the future. SHOW: On disk for class 8

THE BENE GESSERIT

This is by far the longest existing group having its beginnings in Terran pre-history. It began with the Aryan immigrants but was fed by the indigenous cultures in Harappa (India) and in Mesopotamia who worshipped a mother goddess.

These people, males and females, carried a genetic trait for group consciousness. The males lost this after a millennium and the active females only retained the memories of past active females, thus losing half the personal history of the family. Thus a desire was born to breed an active male strain to regain complete memory and consciousness.

The culture was dominated by the active trait females who went thru extensive training and who thru tribal migration and interracial marriage eventually dominated two continents.

A new doctrine became established in Mesopotamia that an activated male consciousness would be able to understand the future as well as the past. the doctrine was hard to disseminate as it openly challenged the older "permanence" doctrine of a Goddess directed fate. This gave rise in many places to the myth of the dying/rising son/lover resurrection figures who were "saved" by the mother/wife such as Isis/Osiris, Innana and Damuzzi.

As patriarchy rose the Mothers became a secret order, married to aristocratic leaders. Only some of them retained group consciousness and limited prescience (ability to see the future) but the sybils, (such as the oracle at Delphi, etc.) were a major network that the Motherhood used to tie together all the major political powers north and south of the Mediterranean.

In all the tribes the mothers longingly proclaimed this savior as a superhero who would "shorten the way" and bring release from bondage thru redemption, rebirth or rejuvenation. This savior could understand the future and the term applied some places was Hdarak meaning to be everlasting. The Bene Gesserit term KWISATZ HADERACH is linked to that.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT, a product of 12 centuries of careful breeding, conquered most of the known world reuniting gene carriers separated for centuries. The library founded at Alexandria made it possible to reintegrate all the charts of breeding thus the core of Mothers formed the prototype of the Bene Gesserit, a term meaning those who "bear well" but meant those who strive to breed a savior.

There were other potential active trait males, Augustus, married to Livia, a B.G. and from the south, Jesus, but censorship by his organization makes it hard to know what he was.

The following centuries saw much repression of women but the B.G attempted to continue secretly breeding and training within the extended families the WICCA attempted to keep alive all these traditions but were often persecuted and killed by the patriarchal religious establishments.

The B.G survived all attempts to wipe them out and as technology developed, they used it to streamline their breeding programs.

As people moved off Earth, they developed an eventual seeding and breeding plan for off-Terran colonization. They had covertly taken control of programming the seeding machines.

The purpose of the sisterhood was questioned. Some felt the breeding for political and economic power was the order’s primary goal. Others for a male savior who ironically would work against them. As one mother said:

"We strive for one who ends our strife. But in our striving, we work for that which will work against us. Only by not knowing where we go can we advance. When we have found our future, we will be embedded in time as the fly is in the amber."

THE MISSIONARIA PROTECTIVE

The sisterhood used thought machines to program groups of their sisters to go to newly inhabited planets to implant protective myths and spread passwords so that communities would be conditioned to give aid and comfort to strangers who said the "secret word."

They planted the idea of some mysterious benefactor so a society would accept the stranger. Underneath the layer of passwords was the idea of the Savior figure who’s coming symbolized the cultures final triumph.

the PANOPLIA PROPHETICUS was the most important source material. An elaborate collection of legends, rituals and training manuals. The primary myths used involved the worship of a female deity, the veneration of pregnant women and the prophetic wisdom of old women as well as the salvation inherent in the prophesied male savior figure. the B. G. would learn the local cultural values and ideas then provide entertainment which gave their ideas. Or, they would join the educational system and gradually alter the curriculum.

TRAINING

The goal was to insure that the Sister would have her power under control whatever the situation: 1st axiom" My mind controls my reality.”

SHOW: Clip of Gom Jabber-4 min

The B.G. was known publicly as a religious order, a mystic sisterhood. However, none of their material contains reference to a transcendent power or any ethical or moral philosophy or theology.

In fact the Missionaria Prot. says religion is "the purposeful instruction of the masses. It is questionable whether they have ever been a religious organization. The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth"

BUTLERIAN JIHAD (the great revolt) in 200 B.G. a Bene Gesserit woman believed a machine had killed her only child at birth. as a result she began a holy war which swept the whole empire and destroyed all machines, especially computers, but nothing was spared. This burned a hatred and fear of thinking machines so deeply into the human psyche that it was still around when Paul Atreidies came to power. Only the Planet Ix still made and used machines.

The spacing guild (who used spice from Arrakis to warp or bend space and make travel possible over many parsecs), the Mentat training, and the empire itself were made necessary by the Jihad.

It is believed the spacing guild discovered Arrakis, or Dune and the spice somewhere around their founding in 0. It is from their founding that the calendar begins dating A.G.

They totally rely on the spice to navigate thru space but are themselves a dead end.

THE ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE (see details / list at bottom of page)

There was an attempt shortly after the spacing guild was founded to unify all the scriptures of earth by the Committee of Ecumenical Translators (or C. E.T.)

From the Hebrew Bible Genesis, Exodus, Laws, Promises, Kings, Joab, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Gospel, Apostles, Epistles and revelation.

All historical books of the Judeo-Christian scripture were harmonized as far as possible with the Qur’an, the wisdom literature was assimilated to Taoist and Socratic ideas.

Hindu and Buddhist traditions were covered with the Upanishads, Vedas, Puranas, the Gita, sutras of the Bodhisattvas, book of Koan answers, etc.

This was not well accepted at the time but in the first millennium, it was not accepted and had at least 101 religions based on it. By the 10th millennium, it was widely accepted and used by Paul Maud’dib to mold The Fremen.

THE ORDER OF MENTATS began about the 13th cent. A. G. and were an attempt to create "human computers" to replace the computers lost in the Butlarian Jihad.

There were 3 levels of adepts: memorizers, processors and Hypothesists. A trainee had to pass thru all the ranks.

Martial arts were included in the training when it was needed. This led to training mentat assassins and by the time of Paul Atreides, this was common (10,190 A.G.)

Paul, in fact, was trained as a mentat.

FREMAN

The Freman were the sole remnant of a people known as the Zensunni wanderers, who were originally followers of a "prophet" named Maometh,, known as the 3rd Mohammed. (c. 1381 B.G.). They were a conservative offshoot and wanted to live life according to the "Ways of the Fathers."

There were originally other groups of Zensunni wanderers but all but the Freman lost their identity when they spread out into the universe. The reason the Freman didn't is that Arrakis, or Dune, provided the Melange (spice) which kept their past memories alive for thousands of years.

Their religion was severe in the extreme. It demanded close obedience to an authority figure who must have literally the power of life and death over his subjects. However, this power could be challenged by a fight to the death and frequently was if his behavior seemed inappropriate.

To the Fremen the deity was SHAI HULUD, the spirit of Arrakis. It stood for the Sandworm which was the essence of all sandworms. Shai Hulud was the "Old Man of the Desert,” "Old Father Eternity,” and "Grandfather of the Desert.” The sandworms were both the bane and the boon of Arrakis.

A major ingredient of Freman rites was a small sandworm drowned in water to produce the "water of life" a poison which, drunk by a rev. mother and changed became a powerful narcotic which was used by the Freman sietch or community in its "tau" orgies of oneness.

SHOW clip of "Water of life."

This orgy of oneness gave the Fremen an overwhelming sense of unity of the community. It contained a mystical dimension that transcended time and space. since each sietch kept a community reservoir in which all members kept their water and when a person died, their water was recovered from the bodies for the members of the sietch. Dishonored men or women were not added to the water. Thus all members living and dead were part of the community.

The destruction of the Freman culture was inevitable because of its dependence on two elements that were changing.

First, was the nature of Arrakis, which by its very harshness gave the Fremen a belief that this was how things were to be. The other was the Fremen's isolation from all outside influence, though thru their rev. mothers and the items placed by the Bene Gesserit they had been primed with the legends of the savior to come.

Pardot Kynes came to Arrakis as an imperial planetologist and ecologist and went native. He convinced some of the Fremen that the planet could be changed and could bloom. With this many Fremen started actively seeking change for their world. When Paul Maud’dib was actually able to make these changes real, the Fremen could not deal with it.

The second element, isolation, changed with the arrival of the house Atreides on Arrakis. For Leto and Paul the Fremen were a potential army to be used in the political intrigues off world. The physical and spiritual changes wrought by Paul ended by killing both Shai-Hulud and the Fremen. Without the unique circumstances that nurtured both, neither could continue.

SECULAR STRUCTURE OF THE EMPIRE

The Landsraad, made up of the great aristocratic families in the empire, and out of which house Corrino had ruled since 88 B.G. was related to house Atriedes. The Emperor sends the Atriedes to Dune with plans for the lines destruction since it was becoming to powerful. Shadam IV doesn't know that both the Duke and Lady Jessica are part of the B. G. breeding program. Nor does the empire know the true condition on Arrakis. (the Fremen are more numerous than believed, and they are unaware of Pardot kynes ecological work which has reinforced the Bene Gesserit's messianic planted expectations.

PAUL

Given this background he is placed on Arrakis where spice permeates everything

PAUL BECOMES MAUD'DIB

With his father’s death, he and his mother flee to the desert with the presence of spice in the food and in the surroundings. Paul is brought to full mentat awareness and has some site of the future even before the Fremen are met and he is accepted into their protection.

After two days of being with the Fremen, Jessica begins using the code words planted by the Missionaria Protectiva.

Since their rev. mother has grown old, they ask Jessica to become their new one by ingesting the water of Life in "The ceremony of the Seed." She transmutes the water of life to become their new Rev. Mother, but in the process her unborn daughter, Alia, is born with full awareness and herself is a full Rev. mother. Alia, Paul's sister, is an abomination, and evil. As she represents knowledge without morals.

SHOW: Clip of Jessica & watery life 4min / Episode 2*22 -- 2 min From 1986 June

Paul is aware not only of safety among the Fremen and the restoration of House Atriedes to power but of the impending Jihad and his role in it.

Paul begins training the Fremen for battle using techniques of the Bene Gesserit as well as his own training. Once trained he begins leading raids on the spice production of the Harknonens until he brings the Harkonans, and the Emperor to Arrakis but only after he is initiated by riding a worn

SHOW: worm ride 5m -- show to end of film -- 7 more minutes. (depends on time)

Paul takes the water of life at this point, something no man has survived, and is comatose for 2 weeks. It is his consort, Chani, who finally brings him out of it. He can now see the past and the future, and realizes that the great houses of the Landsraad are in orbit over Arrakis waiting to come in for the spoils. He tells the Guild that if they try anything, he will destroy all the spice, tells who he is and ascends the emperors throne.

FREMEN JIHAD

House Corrino had never tried to wipe out the great houses of the Landsraad that rebelled but simply, using the Sardaukar troops would simply put down rebellion. This had worked for over 10,000 years.

However, they did not understand their new opponent. For the Fremen this was in the province of religion. The great houses saw themselves taking advantage of political flux, but the Fremen saw unbelievers defying their Mahdi. Rebellion against Paul was an attack on the Messiah promised for thousands of years. It was their traditions and their religion that turned a war to consolidate control of an empire into a Jihad.

As the Fremen move from planet to planet and system to system, the encounter many faiths not their own, some involving tenets or rituals as loathsome to them as the clones (gholas) produced on Theilax who were genetically engineered to serve various purposes.

As they killed billions of people, the religious motivation of the Fremen came to play an ever greater part in their battles. Slowly, the assurance of a secure throne for their Mahdi came to be joined by the desire for a "purified" empire.

The Bene Gesserit became a target since the Fremen could now produce their own Rev. mothers and the Fremen had at best been ambivalent about the B.G. Now the B. G. found itself allied against the Fremen and hoped to kill the one they had spent millennia to produce, since he was beyond their control. They hoped they could produce another who would be controllable.

The Jihad became a vehicle of conversion and in place of the Landsraad the sole force of the empire was Paul Maud’Dib, now the Mahdi for the human race, not just for the Fremen. Where there had been many religions, now there was one.

Paul estimated, conservatively, that the jihad had killed 61 billion, sterilized 90 planets, completely demoralized five hundred others and wiped out the followers of 40 religions.

The Bene Gesserit and the Spacing guild survived the jihad but only as a pawn of the emperor.

LETO II AND GHANIMA (Paul and Chani's children)

Paul and Chani's twins (Chani died in childbirth) were the future of the human race.

Leto, by covering himself with sand trout, (the early stage of shai hulud) became a non-human, though sentient worm (the god emperor). He was able to do what Paul had not wanted to do himself, ie, be able to live essentially forever with both a knowledge of the past and the future, to become the true Kwisatz Haderach.

This was Leto II's golden path. Only he knew the one and only path and he had sole ownership of it. The past, or beginning of the Golden Path, had to remain in his hands because it was a key to what he intended for the future. Thus he didn't allow historians or others to deal with the past at all.

The Bene Gesserit called Leto II the true Kwisatz Haderach but again, had no hand in controlling him. In fact the B. G. were responsible for a large number of the plots on his life in the more than 3500 years he reigned.

Under Leto II reign the planet Arrakis became the wet paradise that Pardot Kynes had envisioned. However, the worms could not survive the climactic change.

THE FISH SPEAKERS

The fish speakers were an all-female military organization who were created to protect and defend the God-King. They began after the first leader had a dream in which a silver fish emblem spoke to her and warned of future trials and cautioned the leadership to develop military prowess for religious purposes.

It was the 2nd generation leader to whom it was revealed that the purpose was to defend the god king. Many more devout women had dreams with the fish speaking to them.

The Fish speakers became the Brides of the God King. There was not full development till about a thousand years after Leto began to reign and Duncun Idaho 11099 led a revolt of the Fremen which threatened him.

LETOS BREEDING PROGRAM

Ghanima, who lived herself 308 years due to the spice, which increases longevity, was the genetic mother of the breeding program, which Leto had taken out of the hands of the B.G.

Leto II basically must undo what the Bene Gesserit had spent millennia doing: His breeding program was to break the ability to see the future, of himself or of any potential others.

The purpose was to breed individuals who would be invisible to those, like himself, with prescience. He realized that this was the only way to save the human race, by re-introducing the element of chance or fate into human life.

SIONA ATRIEDES (13698-13953) was the end of Leto's millennia long experiment in human evolution. She was the first of the new Atreides line capable of disappearing from prescient view. This was the means of humanity's continued survival and his own destruction.

She and Duncun the Last were finally responsible for Leto's death by arranging for him to fall off a bridge into a river setting all the sandtrout free.

This ended IJAZ, prophecy that can't be denied.

The Union of Siona and Duncun brought actual freedom for the first time and brought humanity into true harmony with the chaos of the universe since their offspring could not be seen by prescience. Leto II plans resolved a debate between fate and free will that had been belabored for over 20,000 years

ARRAKIS AFTER LETO II

The sandtrout had all been destroyed as Arrakis became wet.

When Leto II was killed by drowning, the santrout placed on his skin at the beginning of his transformation escaped. They had his memories as fragments of his knowledge, but not united as a whole.

After a long period enough new Sandtrout developed for the great worms to reappear. This can happen because the sandtrout "steal" water and Arrakis dries out again.

A new religion develops connected with calling back from the the scattering the various peoples who went throughout the universe following the wars starting with the death of the god emperator. The memories of the worms seem to draw back the various peoples to Arrakis. This is called "the religion of the Divided God."

HERETICS OF DUNE:

The reappearance of the fully developed worms on Arrakis that have fragments of LETO II's memories not only starts bringing back from the scattering various new and altered forms of social behavior which had developed in the scattering but brings about changes in the old empire of Leto II and in Arrakis itself.

One of these changes is another genetic mutation in the Atreides line occurring on Arrakis in which Sheeana finds that the worms respond to her as one of their own, similar to Leto II after his transformation and that she has some control over them.

She and one worm are taken from Arrakis to the motherhouse of the Bene Gesserit. While the B.G. arrange the total destruction of Arrakis and all remaining worms, thus stopping the fragments of memories of Leto II from influencing the future.

Also developed during the scattering is a false but lethal offshoot of the B.G called the honored matres, which the B.G. ultimately brings into their order.

There is still another offshoot of the scattering almost certainly connected with the genetic engineering of the planet Tleiax who in some manner or another in their engineering of genetics are influencing events in the future.

The final climactic breakout is when Sheeana, another Duncun Idaho, a worm under their control, and a Jewish remnant who had preserved a large portion of the Bene Gesserit memories thru their own rev. mother, succeed in breaking the web of destiny being set up by the by the Tleiax and enter into an all new universe to start over again. Duncon and Sheeana being the new Adam and Eve on a green planet being turned into a desert for the worms to repopulate. This because the melange is absolutely essential to the guild and the rev. mothers.

However, the last 2 vol. of the series simply do not have the developed religious feel and detail of the others. In many respects they are adventure books with religious terminology preserved from the others.

Herbert put 6 years of research into this series. He says of it:

REFERENCE MATERIAL

List of Dune religions

From Wikimedia

The Religions of Dune are a key aspect of the fictional setting of the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. Many of the names of religions mentioned in the novels Indicate they are blends of current belief systems, some syncretic.

According to Appendix II: The Religion of Dune in the 1965 novel Dune, after the Butlerian Jihad, the Bene Gesserit composed the Azhar Book, a "bibliographic marvel that preserves the great secrets of the most ancient faiths". Soon after, a group made up of the leaders of many religions (calling itself the Commission of Ecumenical Translators) created the Orange Catholic Bible, the key religious text of the Dune universe, which contains elements of most ancient religions."

Buddislam: The term for those religions derived from a syncretic fusion of denominations of Buddhism and Islam. The connection of the Zensunni with Buddislarn suggests the latter arose during the Third Islamic Movement associated with the Maometh Saari

Zenshiism: A hybrid of the religious principles of Zen (a school of Mahayana Buddhism) and Shia Islam. It does not occur in the original Dune series, appearing only in the later books by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson and mentioned to be defiant fanatics unlike the Zensunni pacifists; Zenshiite slaves are behind the uprising on Poritrin.

Zensufism: is a hybrid of Zen and Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism which, based on epigrams in Chapterhouse: Dune, would have figured in Dune 7. There are only two Zensufi epigrams in Chapterhouse: Dune:

Heretics of Dune states that this was the religion of the Bene Tlellaxu, who had originally been part of the Zensunni Wanderers.

Zensunni: is a syncretic religious belief combining principles of Zen Buddhism and Sunni Islam. In the fictional far future of human civilization portrayed in the series, various ethnic and political groups adhere to this worldview, including the Fremen, originally the "Zensunni Wanderers."

In Terminology of the Imperium (the glossary of the novel Dune), Frank Herbert provides the following definition:

ZENSUNNI: followers of a schismatic sect that broke away from the teachings of Maometh (the so- called "Third Muhammed") about 1381 B.G. The Zensunni religion is noted chiefly for its emphasis on the mystical and a reversion to "the ways of the fathers." Most scholars name Ali Ben Ohashi as leader of the original schism but there is some evidence that Ohashi may have been merely the male spokesman for his second wife, Nisai.

According to Terminology of the Imperium, the planet Poritrin is "considered by many Zensunni Wanderers as their planet of origin, although clues in their language and mythology show far more ancient planetary roots. The former Imperial capital (and later prison world) Salsa Secundus was "the second stopping point in migrations of the Wandering Zensunni Fremen tradition says they were slaves on S.S. for nine generations." The "third stopping place" is noted as Bela Tegeuse, and Harmonthep was the "sixth stop."

The ascension of Paul Atreides as Emperor in Dune and the expansion of Fremmen Influence throughout the Imperium widely popularized the study of Zensunni beliefs. It is noted in Terminology of the Imperium that the Orange Catholic Bible "contains elements of most ancient religions, Including ... Zensunni Catholicism","

Herbert "sprinkled Zen ideas throughout Dune" as when Reverend Mother Mohiam queries Paul:

"Ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.

The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen, he nodded.

"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."

The Reverend Mother's query is reminiscent of a Zen koan, which generally contains aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet may be accessible to intuition. Zen masters "developed this trick to 'open up the mind of their students without filling it with their own opinions" Herbert himself noted in "Dune Genesis", his own analysis of the development of the novel, that:

"As in an Escher lithograph, I involved myself with recurrent themes that turn into paradox. The central paradox concerns the human vision of time. What about Paul's gift of prescience-the Presbyterian fixation? For the Delphic Oracle to perform, it must tangle itself in a web of predestination. Yet predestination negates surprises and, in fact, sets up a mathematically enclosed universe whose limits are always inconsistent, always encountering the unprovable. It's like a kōan, a Zen mind breaker."

In the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson Legends of Dune prequel trilogy, before and during the Butlerian Jihad the Zensunnis were brought as slaves from their home-worlds (like Harmonthep) to places like Portrin. After the slave revolt on Poritrin, many Zensunnis escaped to Arrakis; these Zensunni wanderers would become the first Fremen.

Terminology of the Imperium also defines several Zensunni terms:

FIQH: knowledge, religious law; one of the half-legendary origins of the Zensunni Wanderers' religion. [Figh (Arabic;) Is Islamic jurisprudence]

Judaism: In contrast to the drastic changes which have occurred in other religions in the 25,000 years between the 20th century and the time of the Honored Matres Invasion, Judaism has undergone comparatively little change. Jewish characters also feature in Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's sequels, Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune.

These Jewish communities are led by rabbis, at least some of whom have working relationships with the Bene Gesserit. Heretics of Dune suggests that Jewish thought may have influenced the development of Bene Gesserit philosophy. The Jewish community described in the novels defines itself as part of "Secret Israel", which, in conjunction with the sparse historical information given in the novel, suggests that the Jewish people had decided to conceal themselves to follow their religion and avoid the recurrent atrocities of their past. Long ago, the Bene Gesserit and the hidden Jewish communities came to an understanding of sorts: the Bene Gesserit would provide ald to hidden Jews if they were ever threatened, and help hide the fact that the Jewish religion survives in secret; in return, If ever a Bene Gesserit acolyte is lost and threatened on an isolated planet, the local Jewish community give her aid and shelter. A simple arrangement, but one which endured between both groups for millennia. Moreover, the Torah and Talmudic Zabur are listed in Appendix II of Dune as having contributed to the Orange Catholic Bible; the appendix also notes that these books were preserved on Salusa Secundus.

Mahayana Christianity: A hybrid of Mahayana Buddhism and Christianity, which presumably Interpreted Jesus Christ as a Buddha.

Mahayana Lankavatara: This is a minority religion in the Imperium, which is clearly based on the Lankavatara Sutra, a text of the Mahayana.

Muadru: The Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson Legends of Dune prequel trilogy notes that "Muadru is an ancient religion predating the Old Empire before the Time of the Titans. Its prophetic writings are used out of context by Iblis Ginjo during the Butlerian Jihad; there is also some indication that the Muadru and the Cogitors shared the same origin. In Paul of Dune, Paul Atreides shows Count Fenring an ancient Muadru room buried deep under his Arrakeen residence. He further explains to him that the Muadru are an ancient people who once settled through the entire galaxy but became suddenly extinct. They are believed to have settled on Arrakis while it was still a verdant planet and to have introduced the sandworms there long before the arrival of the Zensunni Wanderers.

Navachristianity: According to the Legends of Dune trilogy, Navachristianity is the religion of the ruling class on Poritrin. However, according to Dune it is found on the planet Chusuk, but there is no explanation of its tenets. Three tenable etymologies have been suggested. One treats it as a portmanteau of Navajo with Christianity and assumes Herbert was alluding to a movement comparable with the Native American Church; another treats it as a worn down fusion of Nauvoo with Christianity in reference to the American religious movements begun there; the third derives "nava-" from 'new' in Sanskrit, the liturgical language of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, often being used in the same sense as 'neo'. Thus, Navachristianity may simply mean 'neo-Christianity', or represent a blend of Christianity with the religions of the Indian subcontinent; it should be noted, that in light of the syncretic forms of Buddhism listed, the Indian religion most likely is the little-mentioned faith of Hinduism.

Third Islam: According to Appendix II: The Religion of Dune, there had been three Islamic Movements in the time before the Corrino Imperium, and "Third Islam" is just a shorthand term for "The Third Islamic Movement". Clearly, the First Islamic Movement was that of the Muhammed. Herbert does not go into details about the Second Movement, though it can be inferred that it too had a prophet named Muhammed (it may be suggested too that the "Muadh Quran" of Caladan was the scripture of "Second Islam"). Third Islam's prophet was Maometh (a form of Muhammed) and it was from his teachings in the Maometh Saari that the Zensunni Wanderers schismed. As this happened in 1381 B.G., it follows that the Third Islamic Movement occurred before this date; the association of the syncretic Zensunni with Third Islam implies that the latter saw the fusing of Buddhism with Second Islam. The scripture of the Maometh Saari likely derives its name from the Arabic "saari", meaning "woven cloth", and alludes to the interweaving of koranic surah or ayat with Buddhist sutras (note that sutra itself means a thread).

Zen Hekiganshu: This is Herbert's rendering of the Hekiganroku, a Chinese collection of Zen (ie., Chan) koans compiled in China during the Song dynasty in 1125, which formed the basis of an associated cult in the Dune cosmos (or so we may infer). Curiously, Herbert renders the roku ending as shu, which appears to be the character #, meaning "document" and is notably used in the alternate title for the Classic of History, Shangshu. Thus, in traditional Chinese the phrase Zen Hekiganshu would be Chán Blyánshű (R). The connection between Buddislam and this sect is unexplained, but contextually, the inference is that the Zen Hekiganshu tradition rejected any fusion with Islam, thus retaining its purity and minority status.

ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE

FAITHS RESPONSIBLE FOR. This list is taken from the flyleaf of the first edition. NOTE: only 101 religions are listed, because twenty of the original C.E.T. were recalled before the work was completed.

Further references: ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE M.T. (IN LIFE AND TEACHING OF PAUL MUAD DIB): Anon.. The Dune Gospels, Rakis Ref. Cat. 1-T2: Pyer Briizvair. A Variorum Edition of the Orange Catholic Bibie Commen taries: Summa of Ancient Beliefs and Practice (Bolchef: Collegium Tarno).