Frank Herbert’s Warrior Religion

The Warrior Religion project is some of the most popular poasts on RESAVAGER. It’s more an exploratory effort at this point that I hope to focus down upon. Admittedly, I lose focus on certain aspects. What I want to do today, however, is lay out what Frank Herbert’s idea of the WARRIOR RELIGION was as it appeals to most of us who have read DUNE. Much of the modern appeal of the Warrior Religion comes from the recent movie adaptation specifically the scene showing the Sardaukar home world where they are preparing soldiers for the ambush on the Atreides. The quote from Paul Atreides in the book and the movie concerning the Warrior Religion is actually about the Fremen who get a very inaccurate betrayal in the movies.

The Sardaukar no doubt adhere to a Warrior Religion, but one in decline during the Dune story. They’re disillusioned with the emperor and find themselves being dominated by the true Warrior Religion on Arakkis. It’s hard for me to meme the Fremen because the movie adaptation does them disservice compared to the Sardaukar. What must be understood is that both these races are related. They’re descended from a race called the Zensunni wanderers. They fled from planet to planet during the war with the thinking machines to escape persecution by the imperial forces. These wanderers went to many planets including Selusa Secondus, the homeworld of the Sardaukar, and ends on Arakkis, the homeworld of the Fremen.

With this tedious background information out of the way, we must look at what Herbert’s Warrior Religion looked like. The way you need to remember is that the Sardaukar are comparable to the Europeans whereas the Fremen who kept drifting further into the frontier became something more. Related, but different. The Fremen way developed out of the harsh conditions they were born into which helped forge their martial NOMOS which we will explore here. The harsh realities of Arakkis turned the religion of the Zensunni into something more PAGAN. The Fremen began to see the sandworms on Arakkis as manifestations of GOD. The tenets of their religion began to match more those of an Aryan mannerbund than an actual faith.

The Fremen were organized into sietches. The sietch was hidden, usually underground or in some type of cave. The word sietch meant “place of assembly in time of danger.” The tribe was protected by the men, but the women, olds, and children were also extremely dangerous. The Fremen people were not united, they were considered more confederations. Each sietch had its own leader. No Fremen could speak for all the sietches, but the character Stilgar was highly respected and was about as close as you got to someone who could lead the Fremen.

Each sietch’s size was based on how many people it could support. How many people a sietch could support depending on how much water they could acquire. The water in a Fremen’s body belonged to the tribe. When he died, his water was taken, but the body was left for burial. This also meant they weren’t taking on refugees. If you wanted in the tribe, you had to prove your worth by showing that you were an asset. This could be proven by beating a Fremen in a fight to the death as they could only support so many people at a time.

Becoming the leader of a sietch had the same requirement. The Fremen would only follow their strongest warrior, so if you wanted to take over a sietch, you would have to kill its leader in a duel. These duals were done with daggers while wearing no armor. The focus on combat prowess was emphasized in each sietch. Arakkis was a dangerous planet. A sietch would have to compete with other sietches for resources on top of dealing with the Harkonnens or Sardaukar who were also plundering the planet. Only the strong survive and the Fremen in turn, made sure they were the best fighters. They specialized in the ambush, destroying raiding parties and then disappearing before there could be any counterattack.

The Fremen were far from a primitive people. By the time they took in Paul Atreides and his mother, they had their own armories where they figured out how the foreign weapons brought in worked and developed their own weapon systems. What Muad’Dib did was unite the Fremen people, but you must understand that it was not like the movie. The best Fremen were organized into an elite group called the Fedaykin(death commandos).  There were 10,000 Fedaykin and these 10,000 were responsible for the majority of Muad’Dib’s JIHAD.

“‘Statistics: at a conservative estimate, I’ve killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I’ve wiped out the followers of forty religions which had existed since—‘ ‘Unbelievers!’ Korba protested.” -Frank Herbert

What can you take away from Herbert’s idea of the WARRIOR RELIGION?

When you talk about religion, we like to confuse religion with Christianity because, in our world, Christianity conquered every other religion. I would rather you think of religion in the Spenglerian definition, “Every soul has religion, which is only another word for its existence. All living forms in which it expresses itself — all arts, doctrines, customs, all metaphysical and mathematical form worlds, all ornament, every column and verse and idea — are ultimately religious, and must be so.” The Fremen religion was transformed by their experience on Arakkis and became something else. Many like to talk about how Herbert was influenced by the middle easterns and the idea of “asabiyyah,” which may very much be the case, but you must remember that Herbert was also AMERICAN and you can just as well relate the Fremen to the American experience on the frontier. Arrakis was on the edge of the known universe. The planet itself forced the Fremen back into nature and made them stronger(remember their ancestors spent their time fleeing from persecution).

The foundation of Herbert’s Warrior Religion is the brotherhood of armed men. The survival of the sietch depended on its warriors. The brotherhood must be focused on victory and conquest. It cannot get caught up too much in tradition. The ways of war evolve and your people must be able to adapt to them. Better said, tradition must match up with the doctrines of nature. You must strive to make nature and convention agree as much as possible, for as long as possible.

The decentralization of the Fremen sietches are vitally important to our current situation. You see many trying to organize populist movements or appealing to the victim mentality in each of us, trying to do what the left does. This will not work without power, which our side doesn’t have. Extreme localism is the answer. Right now so many of us are conquered by distance. Logistically, we can’t help each other. Someone who sympathizes with your situation, but is half the world away cannot help you. You must have frens who are close by. Frens you can call on when you need help. Frens united under a singular purpose: the betterment of the whole.

You see groups trying to do this today, but it becomes nothing more than trying to recreate the “trad life.” No, it cannot be this way. You should want more than to be some simple farmer. Your group of frens should be vying for power locally. Expanding your reach in any way you can. Get into local government and politics. Amassing as much wealth and power as you can.

We all have these ideas of a unified white race or my minority position of there being an American race. The reality is all that talk is SECONDARY to the task at hand: taking care of you and yours. The real damage done to Americans and the other European countries is the isolation. The number of frens a man has dropped terribly since the 1950s. In the last letter the mother of Andrew Jackson left to her son was this sage advice that you too, must remember, “Andrew, if I should not see you again, I wish you to remember and treasure up some things I have already said to you; in this world, you will have to make your own way. To do that you must have friends. You can make friends by being honest and you can keep them by being steadfast. You must keep in mind that friends worth having will, in the long run, expect as much from you as they give to you.” It’s very difficult to do things on your own, you need frens and you want frens who share your values and share your goals. Be in it to improve the lives of your combined families.

Your brotherhood of frens cannot reject the current society. They must be willing to graft on it if it means money, power, or the improvement of the brotherhood as a whole. The excellent find a way to thrive regardless of the environment they’re born into. Strive to master the conditions you’re born into. Prove your worth to God and Nature. How do you go about making this brotherhood? That IS the question at hand and I don’t have a solid answer for you.

In this world, there are written and unwritten laws. On the public side of things, you must be adhering to the written laws. In practice and action, however, your brotherhood of frens must be practicing the unwritten law. The law of nature which all the foreigners in the US seem to know in the blood. It’s only the Founding Stock which seems to have forgotten.