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The Bene Gesserit Aren't Witches | Here's What They Actually Are

The Understory

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Everyone in Dune calls them witches. The Fremen call Lady Jessica the witch. The Emperor's daughter calls them witches to their faces. Even the people in the Imperium don't really know what they are.

In this video, I'm breaking down what the Bene Gesserit actually are in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, not the mystical sisterhood the films make them look like, but the ten-thousand-year political project hiding underneath. Where their "powers" actually come from, what the breeding program is really for, why they planted prophecies on hundreds of planets, and why everything Herbert wrote about them is a warning about the kind of institution that thinks it can engineer humanity.

This is grounded in the original six Frank Herbert novels. No prequel material, no show-specific lore, just what's in the books.

Timestamps:
0:00 - They're Not Witches
0:52 - A 10,000-Year Project
1:08 - The Goal: A Kwisatz Haderach
2:46 - Reverend Mothers & Other Memory
5:30 - The Powers: Voice, Truthsay, Prana-Bindu
7:59 - They Don't Have a Religion. They Use One.
9:52 - Jessica's Crime
12:12 - Why Herbert Wrote Them
13:49 - The Tragedy of the Bene Gesserit

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20 Comments

@IntoTheUnderstory Creator 4 months ago Pinned

Where do you land: did Jessica ruin the plan, or save us from it?

@greg61377 4 months ago

I dont think anyone thinks they are actual witches. Think calling them a witch was more meant to be a slur

@jessicastevens1629 4 months ago

Feels like they are a collection of scientists, politicians, philosophers and historians.

@holliegould3463 4 months ago

the BG blamed it all on Jessica falling in love, instead of admitting to their own hubris of thinking they could ever control the Kwisatz Haderach.
the BG could not see the future (that's the entire reason they were doing this), and yet they thought they would 100% have control over somebody who could see an entire side of humanity they never could....
though they had 10,000 years of success, their arrogance was their fatal flaw.

@jupamoers 4 months ago

Magic is just science we haven't understood yet 😉

@carolynallisee2463 4 months ago

Yes, they can control the ageing process, but in the time of the first three novels, it's banned. The Bene Gesserit spent thousands of years working behind the scenes, concealing their full range of powers. They were so afraid of being found out that anything that might draw attention to them was forbidden, and having a group of women who didn't age like everyone else wandering around would certainly have attracted attention.

@strangeangel7166 4 months ago

I heard this explained very simply but very true in the books Paul was not raised to be loyal to the BG instead his mother raised him and instilled in him to place all his loyalty to his family

@ZenLightened7 4 months ago

YES!!! I read them all back in the late '80's and YES, the BENE GESSERIT really were the main characters in the whole series. I've always had great respect, [scholastically], for the Bene Gesserit because they really had their act together. If there ever was a possible way to create a god, they had it figured out, they just couldn't remove the ONE thing that CAN"T be changed- The Human Factor.

@gerrytinder3602 4 months ago

One of the most impactful sentences for me in Dune was the foreword to a chapter near the end (pg. 433 in the illustrated hardbound edition 2005)
"When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual."

As a lapsed LDS member, this shook me. To have read this helped me resolve many self doubts as to that decision made so long ago.

@alexanderhamilton6370 4 months ago

"None of this is supernatural."

Except the part about giant fantasy worms that poop a product which lets you obtain the memories of your mom, her mom, her mom, her mom, all the way down forever and being able to see the future through totally not supernatural advanced prediction abilities.

Got it.

@Mrseancevans 4 months ago

In both Paul’s interactions with Reverend Mother Moiham at the end of the original Dune novel, and in the same reverend mother’s interactions with the Tleilaxu conspirator at the beginning of Dune Messiah, Herbert made it abundantly clear that the BG plan was doomed to fail. Paul tells her the sisterhood was wrong to think they could control what he was, because the very nature of a Kwidzatz Haderact IS control itself, and resists any outside control. The Tleilaxu tells her that they themselves had genetically engineered a Kwidzatz Haderact, and immediately killed it upon discovering what it was capable of, before it could grow into maturity… then called the BG stupid for thinking they could control one.

Even if the timing had been as planned, the son of girlPaul and Feyd would have done something similar, and resisted their control. Hell, if Paul was right about the gestalt consciousness of humanity demanding holy war, then the Jihad still would have happened, just in a different way.

@bembejazz 4 months ago

11:30 it should be called: the Harkonen Pride… and Jessica followed her love but broke humanity free from being engineered into extinction, the golden path was the only path to save humanity, and she tripped the first chess piece towards it.

@AliB333 3 months ago

The most unbelievable part about this is a 10k year project was ruined by love, but only right at the end. I can't believe that didn't happen sooner...

@cyberkitten9212 4 months ago

Control is an illusion and always has been......... VERY good content. You have an impressive understanding of the Dune-verse.

@tardis2005 4 months ago

I read Dune as a high school sophomore at the request of my English teacher. She wanted the book reviewed and was glad I read, even if it was only science fiction. By that time, it was the 1970s and I had been reading Asimov, Harrison, and Heinlein for a while. I looked at all the conflicts and manipulations in the book and saw it all as methods of control, not just by the Bene Gesserit. The Emperor, the spacing guild, the great houses, and even the fremen. They all had a plan, an agenda. I will agree that Jessical broke the Bene Gesserit plan, but also that she fixed it. She gave the sisterhood the Kwisatz Haderach, but they were not going to control him. Yes, that made Paul a tragic figure because while so many were glad to see him come, powerful forces were plotting against him. Yet, his plan, the one started by love, is the one that eventually made it. I will admit, I wore out by Chapterhouse, so I never got to the end.

@SugarCookie-reacts 4 months ago

It's wonderful to see the new gens read these books and understand it. It's lovely. Thank you for sharing your experience about books that raised me up in my time.

@mxvega1097 4 months ago

It's pure tragedy. They wanted to create the ultimate vehicle, vessel, weapon, that they could control, arrogantly assuming that he would be theirs to command and not a monster. Hubris, essentially.
And the gods destroyed them. After hubris comes nemesis.

@Alewort 4 months ago

Correction: the poison is not always derived from spice, Jessica says in Dune that they began using "the poison drug on Rossak".

@TheMimiSard 4 months ago

One of the big things about the Bene Gessrit is they are trained in observation. It can be seen as running by similar themes of Prana Bindu - understand the smallest thing to understand the big picture. Their observation picks up every minute detail, and it is that training that informs the Voice, that informs Truthsaying, that allows them to look at cultures and plant the Missionaria Protectiva, probably it also informs the Imprinting, because their observational training tells them how to calibrate all those other skills.

And here is a point with that, Jessica trained Paul in Bene Gessrit observation. Cross that with his Mentat training and Prana Bindu muscular training, and Paul was not only genetically almost right, but was also trained in all the ways that resulted in him surviving the Water of Life.

And then after Paul, Leto was Preborn, and found a way to not be possessed (really, he basically turned into a Collective), and had the Really Big Picture, and because he also had the loyalty of his sister, he owned the breeding program, and he carried it on, but to his own plan.