Beware the Messiah: Dune and the Energy of Religion

***Spoiler Alert: This text comprises spoilers for Frank Herbert’s Dune novels and for the movies Dune and Dune: Half Two.***

“For false messiahs and false prophets will seem and carry out nice indicators and wonders to deceive, if doable, even the elect.” – Matthew 24:24 (NIV)

“You underestimate the ability of religion.”

Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) utters these phrases as a prescient warning to her father Emperor Shaddam (Christopher Walken) in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Half Two (2024). Like the opposite main characters within the movie, Princess Irulan thinks of faith primarily when it comes to political energy. So it comes as no nice shock that she readily agrees to the loveless marriage proposal of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) on the finish of the movie when she senses a chance for energy as the brand new political construction takes form earlier than her eyes. On this movie, as in Frank Herbert’s novels, faith features as a software to realize energy.

Much more than his first Dune movie (2021), Denis Villeneuve’s second movie emphasizes the uncooked lust for energy within the Dune world, thrusting political mechanizations into place as the first motivating issue for all leaders with a spiritual following. The Bene Gesserit are actually enthusiastic about working behind the scenes not a lot for spiritual religion as for energy in figuring out the fates of countries and empires and worlds. Within the latter movie, Woman Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is sort of demonically possessed with the need for energy. And whereas among the Fremen is perhaps true believers, they’re in the end dangerously-motivated jihadists whose leaders are solely enthusiastic about energy and are prepared to control their folks’s beliefs for these ends. Even Paul’s transient resistance to the attract of energy is little greater than a quirk to work by means of. The place Villeneuve takes probably the most creative license in his adaptation, nonetheless, is within the character of Chani (Zendaya). In Dune: Half Two, Chani realizes virtually from the start that energy is what everyone seems to be in search of. Faith is just a smokescreen for the Nietzschean will to energy that undergirds all of it.

Karl Marx publicizes this notion of faith when he says, in David Papke’s translation, “Faith is the opium of the folks. It’s the sight of the oppressed creature, the center of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless circumstances.” Faith is one thing that provides the naïve a cause to hope, somewhat coronary heart and soul in an in any other case merciless world. It’s a crutch for many who can not face the chilly arduous fact of the chilly arduous world. Villeneuve reveals us the up-close of simply such a world up within the scintillating sands of the magnificent desert planet of Arrakis.

With just a bit creative license, Villeneuve creates two fantastically choreographed standalone tales that however maintain collectively to deliver a shocking portrayal of the Dune world created by Frank Herbert in his 1965 novel Dune. Ok. B. Hoyle and Alisa Ruddell have aptly described Villeneuve’s first movie as Paul’s coming-of-age story. As Ruddell factors out, this enables the primary movie to be about “the lack of Paul’s innocence somewhat than the rise of a messiah.”  And the rise of a messiah is certainly what we see in Dune: Half Two. Megan McCluskey characterizes the story plot of this movie because the conclusion of Paul’s “[t]ransformation into revolutionary chief Muad’Dib, gaining management of not solely the desert planet Arrakis but in addition the whole lot of the universe of the galactic empire referred to as the Imperium within the course of.” Thus, Villeneuve takes a prolonged novel and turns it into two tales—first, the rising to maturity of a heroic determine and second, the fruits of the messianic temptations that overtake that hero.

However what’s spectacularly lacking from the movie is the complexity of faith and humanity depicted by Frank Herbert within the novels. Within the movie, even the characters are much less advanced. By the top of Dune: Half Two, a lot of the characters we now have come to know match into “good” or “unhealthy” classes. After watching the second movie, my teenage daughter expressed her disappointment with the characters: “I assumed Paul was going to be an excellent man. And I assumed I would really like his mom. However she is creepy-evil! Solely Chani is nice ultimately.”

Whereas the movie has to condense the novel, in fact, decreasing advanced characters into good/unhealthy caricatures displays the identical form of lazy vilification or aggrandizement that happens all too usually in social media shaming rituals. This departure from Herbert’s cautious improvement of advanced characters with each good and evil traits at occasions leans towards a binary worldview that’s not discovered within the novel. Whereas there’s some uncertainty about characters within the first movie, the second movie collapses them into easily-defined classes: Both the Bene Gesserit are good or evil. Woman Jessica and Chani are both good or evil. Paul is nice or evil. This flattening applies not solely to characterization but in addition to the reductionist therapy of faith within the movie, and we find yourself with a severely constrained account of faith because the manipulative software of power-mongering populations and people who need to management the destiny of a minimum of of their nook of the universe. There’s little demonstration of real religion in such faith.

Whereas such a illustration of faith matches sure secularized up to date accounts of human-made religions, it will be unfair to attribute this reductionist view to Herbert himself. Certainly, we might do nicely to watch that in Herbert’s novel, Princess Irulan doesn’t warn her father of the ability of religion. As an alternative, she witnesses the extra complete imaginative and prescient of the Bene Gesserit spiritual order whilst she witnesses the downfall of her father’s secular energy. In Irulan and Herbert’s different main sympathetic characters, we see folks in quest of fact concerning the spiritual premonitions and statements they encounter.

Flattening Characters and Faith

Herbert’s novels are a research in character improvement in addition to world constructing. Below his pen, characters don’t simply fall into good character/unhealthy character dichotomies. That is very true together with his main sympathetic characters. In step with this complexification of character, Herbert’s heroes are particularly prone to corruption. Herbert describes his “concept that superheroes are disastrous for humankind” and delineates one of many main themes of the novel: “Even when we discover a actual hero (no matter—or whoever—that could be), finally fallible mortals take over the ability construction that at all times comes into being round such a pacesetter.” By Herbert’s calculus, Paul is destined for corruption in addition to greatness.

Paul Atreides begins with out the hubris that’s the downfall of so many heroic characters, as portrayed within the first movie. However finally he sees himself because the savior of the Fremen, as depicted within the second movie. Whereas I hoped to see the progress of Paul’s inside transformation from well-meaning hero to self-seeking emperor, the change may be very fast in Dune: Half Two. Blink, and also you virtually miss it. His goodness has instantly evaporated, and he has gone to the darkish aspect. Annakin Skywalker’s become Darth Vader took far more time and produced a lot higher agony. The ethical and religious dilemmas Paul skilled within the novel are largely decreased to calculations about the right way to use spiritual beliefs and psychospiritual skills to serve his personal imaginative and prescient of the frequent good—a imaginative and prescient that’s wrapped up in his personal rise to energy.

Paul isn’t the one one who morphs prematurely right into a “new” particular person in Dune: Half Two. The competing inside needs of Woman Jessica are underplayed as she turns into fixated on energy and loses the motherly concern that generally put her at odds with energy constructions even on “her” aspect in Herbert’s novel. Her transformation into Reverend Mom is a fast shift: she turns into a extra commanding but in addition a extra menacing determine. Within the movie, she has no ethical scruples about Paul’s rise to energy so long as her personal energy is preserved within the course of. Not like the novel, wherein her extra cautious change mirrors her hesitations concerning the blended motivations of the Bene Gesserit, the movie merely pushes Woman Jessica and the Bene Gesserit unreservedly on the aspect of a self-absorbed spiritual establishment. Within the novel, Woman Jessica isn’t completely satisfied together with her son’s grip on energy and says as a lot to Chani.

The tip of Dune: Half Two, nonetheless, adjustments the characters of Chani and Woman Jessica as they seem in Herbert’s novel. The 2 highly effective ladies are going their very own methods—Chani about to journey off in disgust away from Paul and Woman Jessica gloating over her attainment of centuries of witch-power. However the novel ends with them in a form of partnership, each nonetheless caring deeply for Paul and gathered close to him to help in pulling again from his ill-conceived energy journey. Like Woman Jessica earlier than her, Chani has been handed over for an official marriage that’s meant to strengthen a political dynasty. Because the love companions of the 2 Atreides males (Paul and his father), Chani and Jessica don’t wield the Atreides title as a result of that’s given to a political associate. The novel ends with a form of alliance between the 2, with Woman Jessica telling Chani, “Suppose on it, Chani: that princess could have the title, but she’ll reside as lower than a concubine—by no means to know a second of tenderness from the person to whom she’s sure. Whereas we, Chani, we who carry the title of concubine—historical past will name us wives.”

The Hazard of Human Messiahs

This flattening of characters and faith within the movie doesn’t, nonetheless, preclude it from sounding the identical alarm that Herbert’s novel does. For the novel and movie each clearly emphasize the hazard and insufficiency of human messiahs. Right here Villeneuve was squarely in keeping with Herbert’s imaginative and prescient. As Villeneuve himself notes, “When the guide got here out, [Herbert] was disillusioned by how folks perceived Paul Atreides.” And the frustration was that Paul’s heroic stature was meant “as a warning . . . a couple of messianic determine.” And so it’s value slowing all the way down to critique Paul’s character as Villeneuve does in Dune: Half Two.

Within the novel and the movie, Paul in the end accepts the messiah mantle ready for him by the Bene Gesserit and the Fremen. For religions that imagine in a messiah or are awaiting a messiah, these warnings are spiritual in addition to political. Believing in a messiah probably makes folks extra prone to abuses of non secular language for political functions. That is particularly obvious when the messiah determine makes use of faith to realize energy and self-aggrandizement.

Paul is referred to by a number of messianic phrases, together with the Arabic Mahdi (مهدي), which, in accordance with the Muslim religion refers to a coming “messianic deliverer who will fill earth with justice and fairness, restore true faith, and usher in a brief golden age.” Moreover the Abrahamic faiths, some Jap religions additionally maintain messianic beliefs. In some iterations of Hinduism, the incarnations of the god Vishnu are prophesied to culminate in a Messiah determine known as Kalki. In Buddhism, Maitreya is the “Buddha of the longer term” whose delivery is foretold because the delivery of 1 who will train enlightenment to the following age of humanity/godhood.

In each Christianity and Hinduism, the Messiah is alleged to be divine, thus probably side-stepping one a part of the criticism leveled by the Dune sequence. If the Messiah is an incorruptibly good divine determine somewhat than a mere human, this Messiah is exempt from the corrupting affect of energy and a self-serving “savior advanced” even when he’s a savior. And a divine Messiah who offers up earthly energy and does “not come to be served, however to serve” isn’t the form of messiah Dune warns us about. Not like Herbert, nonetheless, Villeneuve names The Final Temptation of Christ (1988), which positions Jesus (for some time) as a human messiah, as certainly one of his influences. Herbert doesn’t weigh in on Christ as messiah—human or divine; as a substitute, he persistently paints the hazard of a human messiah as a temptation too nice to tackle with out turning into a power-mongering hazard to the world.

However Herbert and Villeneuve’s Dune movies agree on this: Mere mortals can not wield unchecked energy or develop a “savior advanced” with out turning into corrupted within the course of. Human historical past bears them out, with the Crusades being the obvious instance of the atrocious nature of utilizing faith as an excuse for oppression and violence. And with out making a gift of any spoilers for the novels (and sure movies) that comply with, it’s clear from the title of Herbert’s sequel, Dune Messiah, that we must always anticipate a continuation of this theme.

Christians at the moment would do nicely to keep in mind that when the aspirations of religion and energy are blended, we could also be ripe for manipulation. No matter one’s settlement or disagreement with former President Trump’s insurance policies, for instance, it’s not arduous to see that the promise of energy that Trump held out to Christians and others who have been feeling neglected by the political machines grew to become a software of manipulation. As Ruddell factors out in her insightful essay on the teachings to be discovered from Dune about charismatic leaders, Trump mirrors Paul Atreides in that “he has been capable of wrap himself within the delusion cloth’ of a section of our society… and generate outstanding devotion to himself personally, above and past his platform or occasion.” Different leaders who use faith for political functions try and do the identical. After I was within the ex-soviet nation of Belarus in 2017, for instance, I noticed President Lukashenko (additionally known as “the final dictator of Europe“) make a present of attending the Easter companies at an Orthodox Church—a political calculation to enchantment to believers and even nonbelievers who’re cultural adherents to the church. And so we see the temptation of political leaders (no matter their very own religion or lack thereof) to make use of folks of religion for their very own political functions.

Mining Faith for What It’s Value

In Brian Herbert’s afterword, the youthful Herbert sheds gentle on a few of his father’s spiritual experiences, starting together with his Irish Catholic aunts attempting “to pressure Catholicism on him.” Not surprisingly, the youthful Herbert associates these aunts with the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.  However I feel Brian Herbert is correct to say that “the Dune universe is a religious melting pot . . . [of] Buddhism, Sufi Mysticism and different Islamic perception techniques, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Hinduism.” Given his skepticism of human establishments, it’s possible that Frank Herbert would toss out spiritual establishments so far as doable whilst he searches their crevices for any hints of non secular fact.

Herbert treats faith with extra real curiosity than we discover in Dune: Half Two. In an interview with Tim O’Reilly, Herbert acknowledged:

What I’m saying in my books boils all the way down to this: mine faith for what is nice and keep away from what’s deleterious. Don’t condemn individuals who want it. Be very cautious when that want turns into fanatical.

Whereas Herbert is clearly cautious about “fanatical” faith, what he doesn’t say is whether or not he himself “wants” faith. However together with his suggestion that there’s good in faith that must be “mined,” Herbert leaves open the door for the potential for spiritual fact behind the political masks. Within the movie model, Chani acknowledges not solely that fanatical faith exists however reduces all faith to fanatical exercise. Villeneuve adjustments her character to make her one of many Fremen who do not likely imagine within the faith of the desert folks, attempting to spotlight Paul’s final standing of anti-hero. However in so doing, he obscures Chani’s non-fanatical model of the Fremen religion in Herbert’s novel.

Julia Record notes that “whereas [Dune] critique[s] the establishments of faith and manipulation of the devoted by spiritual leaders,” it does “additionally acknowledge the validity of some spiritual experiences, with sure types of mysticism involving the expertise of pantheistic unity as real.” As Paul takes up the mantle of human messiah and seemingly reduces faith to manipulation, the narrator’s voice turns into more and more crucial of Paul. When Paul tells his mom that the Fremen have a easy faith, Woman Jessica demurs: “Nothing about faith is straightforward.” And whereas Chani is proven as a skeptic of the Fremen faith within the movie, within the novel she leads Paul towards the spiritual beliefs the Fremen have gathered within the desert.

God of the Desert?

For many who have learn the novels, the combination of non secular and ecological questions is clear. Large sandworms and large sandstorms intimate the presence of preternatural powers past absolutely the management of people. Simply in case we missed the importance of those parts in his story, Herbert offers us an appendix about ecology and an appendix about faith on the finish of Dune. And Villeneuve masterfully weaves collectively the ecological and political issues of the novels in a spellbinding and fantastically choreographed set of movies that nonetheless give quick shrift to the spiritual parts.

So what does the desert need to do with religion? Whether or not we consider the “desert fathers and moms” of Christianity or of the Hindu and Buddhist ascetics who sought religious wholeness within the desert or of Muhammad’s “visions within the desert,” it’s no secret that the desert performs a job in lots of the religions Herbert studied. Herbert himself means that the desert is a pure atmosphere for faith:

Throughout my research of deserts, in fact, and former research of faith, everyone knows that many religions started in a desert ambiance, so I made a decision to place the 2 collectively as a result of I don’t suppose that anybody story ought to have anyone thread. I construct on a layer approach, and naturally placing in faith and non secular concepts, you possibly can play one towards the opposite.

On this assertion, taken from his 1969 interview with Professor Willis McNelly of CalState Fullerton, Herbert explicitly described the desert setting of Arrakis as a spiritual atmosphere. Enjoying spiritual concepts towards concepts of the desert Arrakis supplies the seedbed of non secular thought that Herbert finds amenable to his novelistic functions.

Whereas varied teams of individuals are mining the planet Arrakis for the spice melange, Herbert himself is mining the planet for what it’d reveal about faith. Right here we see a little bit of a divergence within the movie. Significantly in Dune: Half Two, faith appears little greater than a Machiavellian smokescreen within the jostling for energy by varied people and peoples. Even when folks of religion are motivated by the need for freedom as a substitute of energy, that freedom can’t be achieved with out energy. And so whereas the Fremen have extra true believers than the opposite spiritual teams, Paul simply manipulates their religion for his personal functions.

With Paul’s prescience and seemingly religious understanding of the world created by Frank Herbert, we is perhaps excused for being stunned that Paul takes up the mantle of agnostic/atheist manipulator somewhat than turning into a believer himself. Julia Record aptly observes, nonetheless, the explanations for Paul’s lack of perception. Paul—maybe like his mom—believes himself to be partaking of a psychospiritual energy somewhat than a supernatural energy:

Paul Atreides of Dune, the Kwisatz Haderach created by the Bene Gesserit to see into the “unknown,” is endowed with prescient powers which might be the results of genetic engineering and the ingestion of psychotropic medicine somewhat than visions from a divine supply. He by no means involves imagine within the myths his Fremen followers construct round him, remaining cynically indifferent from their devotion. On the identical time, he doesn’t discourage his followers from believing in his divinity.

In each the movies and the novel, this type of political manipulation of religion and other people of religion is clearly evident. In Dune: Half Two, faith is sort of synonymous with the desire to energy and so it is smart that the characters would readily settle for any rationalization besides a spiritual one. However the novel doesn’t shut off the spiritual potentialities of one thing supernatural occurring even because it raises the psychological potentialities. In both case, nonetheless, we’re given an image of the universe as a spot that repeatedly illustrates the stench of corruption that haunts the wedding of political energy and faith.

The place Does This Go away Us?

Herbert doesn’t appear certain what to do in regards to the inexplicable parts that he describes in how the Bene Gesserit and Paul and others develop prescience, however the Jungian thought of a collective unconscious is on his thoughts as a possible psychological reply to the query. Herbert’s descriptions of the processes within the brains of Paul and Jessica and others definitely opens to that risk. The psychological reply to the inexplicable could also be seen in Jung’s description of the anima not as a soul however as “a pure archetype that satisfactorily sums up all of the statements of the unconscious, of the primitive thoughts, of the historical past of language and faith.” Thus, the atavistic thoughts somewhat than the spiritual thoughts could possibly be on the backside of the inexplicable in Herbert’s world.

In his second appendix, titled “The Faith of Dune,” Herbert describes an try and create one faith out of the main religions that after existed (together with Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and extra). The Orange Catholic Bible mixed and reinterpreted the essence of those religions. Many believers, nonetheless, rejected this strategy to faith, and “it quickly grew to become obvious that the traditional superstitions and beliefs had not been absorbed by the brand new ecumenism.” However the ruling agnostics rapidly discovered this ecumenical faith appropriate to their functions, and Herbert concludes with appendix with a related Bene Gesserit saying: “When faith and politics journey the identical cart, when that cart is pushed by a residing holy man (baraka), nothing can stand of their path.”

The Bene Gesserit are definitely conscious of the ability in becoming a member of faith and politics. However this consciousness doesn’t essentially translate to an consciousness of the reality of any higher energy within the universe. For Herbert ends his third appendix, the “Report on Bene Gesserit Motives and Functions,” with a telling assertion in regards to the Bene Gesserit. The occasions on Arrakis weren’t merely the results of their very own manipulations: “one is led to the inescapable conclusion that the inefficient Bene Gesserit habits on this affair was a product of a good larger plan of which they have been fully unaware!” Herbert’s novel, not like Villeneuve’s movies, leaves open the potential for supernatural powers at work in methods which might be hidden to those that see solely human-directed maneuvering at play.

In Dune, Herbert examines the pervasive philosophies of contemporary thinkers corresponding to Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Jung alongside the age-old concepts of non secular religion and rediscovered ecological secrets and techniques. What’s the relationship between the religious and the pure, between the human and the non-human, between the earth and the remainder of the universe, between the seen and the invisible?

Believers produce other solutions to supply: Relatively than seeing human society as fully postulated on a will to energy, faith postulates that there’s a energy higher than people to which we’re all topic. Relatively than seeing faith because the opium of the plenty, the crutch on which ignorant folks rely, faith might communicate fact to energy. Relatively than assuming that psychology replaces religious understandings of the world, the religious and the psychological might make clear one another with out displacing one another in any respect. And definitely, a divine Messiah gives a distinct set of potentialities than one who’s merely human. For Christians, the human cry for salvation finds a solution in a Messiah who’s each human and divine.

Whereas Villeneuve’s movies gesture towards a secularized worldview that has been chastened and hardened by the rise of jihadist actions made extra apparent since 9/11, the approaching of the prequel tv sequence this fall might add meals for thought to the perennial questions raised by Frank Herbert’s novels. First titled Dune: The Sisterhood, the prequel has been renamed Dune: Prophecy, suggesting a broader scope of non secular thought than the Bene Gesserit sisterhood alone. Maybe the tv sequence will be capable to depict the complexity of Frank Herbert’s therapy of faith that has been missing within the movies we now have seen thus removed from Villeneuve. Who is aware of? We might even see a return of Villeneuve (who has no half within the Dune: Prophecy sequence) that investigates the spiritual claims with extra rigor and a focus to Herbert’s spiritual imaginative and prescient.