Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear – “Without fear, I die but once”

by StevieVee on January 10, 2010

Frank Herbert’s Bene Gesserit’s Reverend Mother and the Dune Universe Saga Best Known Fear Quote

The Litany Against Fear is nowadays recited by students, scribbled on quote books, tattooed on young bodies and taught at poetry classes.  How come, you wonder? A fear of flying, perhaps? His other stories come more at the end of top 10 lists than this one, yet the gem of every sci fi fan’s top 10 list is one with Dune and a plan for one to read it ten times or more.

Well, first of all Frank Herbert’s Dune Novel and subsequent trilogies in the Duniverse is undoubtedly one of the most amazing science fiction literature pieces of work ever written. How other could I describe it? Hey, it would be sin just to own this book and not plan its time in the spotlight.  It is daredevil amazing.

Herbert’s febrile spirit not only depicted fantastic worlds, epic characters and strange technologies, but he most thoroughly imagined a second stage, a historical, philosophical and religious canvas on which he painted all his stories.

mindkiller1 Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear Without fear, I die but once

fear is the mind killer

The Bene Gesserit, The Tleilaxu, The Fremen, The Sardaukars, The Imperial House Corrino and the always enemies House Atreides and Harkonnen make a good plot for a Sci Fi novel of huge epic proportions, but the wisdom is in the all present quotations from various ancient sources that preface every chapter of Dune books.  Old, one might say, but this year I think we should acknowledge that Litany Against Fear is a real quote to make a significant impact on our culture.

I was a student when I first encountered one of the novels in the second trilogy – Chapterhouse Dune.  As a matter of fact, come to think of it… it is the last in the six books of Dune series.

So I kinda started reading from the end back to the beginnings, he, he… But later on – a leap forward in time – I managed to get a hold of the complete saga and started to read them properly, from the first one to the last in…less than six days I believe!!!

It was not longer that a band from Sweden, Amon Amarth, caught my attention, but I digress…

As a result, I had to read again… and again… devouring all I could get a hold of:

  • I read them 5 times by now.
  • I watched a movie: Dune (1984) – director David Lynch
  • And another TV mini series Dune (2000) directed by John Harrison, launched in Germany as ‘”Frank Herbert’s Dune – Der Wüstenplanet”

Time and time again, whenever I come back to my love (Dune) I read with the same awe and thirst.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I even played the first Dune PC game launched in 1992 by Virgin Interactive for DOS operating systems.
To be honest, I played it with my son when he was 5 years old, only in 1996… or was it 1995?  Who cares!  At that time it was like magic!
The only thing that I couldn’t yet add to my Sci Fi collection is the very rare by now audio track album Dune: Spice Opera (artists Stéphane Picq and Philip Ulrich if i recall correctly.)

But I read a lot of other books and epic space operas and watched movies ever since.

What is then, so impressive about Frank Herbert’s Dune?

Well, for me it was mostly the wisdom.  There is a lot of action, there are a lot of dialogs… but those pieces of thinking diamonds hidden between the books covers… that is something I will always remember.

The Litany Against Fear

Let’s digg into the history before the era of the first Dune novel:

“I have no fear, for fear is the little death that kills me over and over. Without fear, I die but once!”

- ancient form of the Litany Against Fear from The City of Introspection monastic retreat outside of Zimia (before the Butlerian Jihad.)

In my honest opinion, this is THE most comprehensive of them, very concise and full of wisdom.  Try to recite it yourself.  It focuses your mind and frees you of any fears indeed.  You feel a new drive inside you and a wave of confidence rising and bursting to surface your consciousness.

BUT

This is hard to find, as in fact, later on in Dune’s saga, The Bene Gesserit sisters were using a different (longer) form, the same one that young Paul Atreides – the son of Duke Leto Atreides I (future to be Muad’Dib and secretly unknown yet Kwisatz Haderach) -  have used when the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam compelled him to put his right hand in a device (gom jabbar) that was causing pain – as a test of his intellect and a proof of being ‘truly human’.

The litany helped Paul at that time to withstand the excruciating agony:

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.  Only I will remain.”

Now, you read again, try to focus and do not let anything else to disturb you…

Read loud:

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.”

Now brace yourself…

“I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.”

And clear your mind:

“Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”

This is what Dune is all about…  not necessarily the action, but the spirituality.  That is why I love this saga.

That’s why this flyer was not full of rage, because a memory, a voice…something of amon, a person, a bundler…these visions filled my head…

I think I may even drink the tattoo ink and thus let the Litany Against Fear spread from inside my body out to my skin like Leto II the son of Paul Atreides Muad’Dib let the sandtrout cover his skin and became a human sandworm and ultimately God-Emperor of Dune for over 3500 years.  Whoaaa!

I’m part success because the things in top control cannot control me….

StevieVee in a prescient dream vision…

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Tagged as: amon amarth, bene gesserit, daredevil, fear is the mindkiller, litany against fear, overcome your fear, reverend mother

  • Stephanie

    I must not fear.
    Fear is the mind-killer.
    Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
    I will face my fear.
    I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
    And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
    Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
    Only I will remain.

    I need to learn this…
    Steph

  • http://threewestwinds.com/ Peter Frauenglass

    I had somehow missed the shorter version of the litany in my reading of the dune series. Which book was it in?

    I totally agree that what makes Dune stand out from the crowd is Herbert's wisdom. There are other sci-fi epics out there, but none speak to me as eternally as Dune. I almost ended up writing my thesis on it, but the topic was denied due to some personal anger the dean had towards me from other years.

    The wisdom I find most personally inspiring from Dune is the message of self improvement and growth of the species. People often talk of a coming technological singularity as something driven by ever faster hardware, but I remind them that each human brain contains more neurons than there are transistors on the planet. If we want to grow, we don't need bigger memory banks or faster brains – everything we need, we already have. The real challenge is to figure out how to use it.

    Why is it that elementary schools are neglected while colleges receive the big money? It's as infants that we create the mental programs that will dominate our thinking for the rest of our lives. I truly believe that both mentats and witches (without the mystical memory-sharing; instead try a hard wired radio-link kind of memory sharing) are possible, starting tomorrow.

    I'm no literary master like Herbert, but I'm trying to embed the same sense of wisdom and mystery into my own book (http://threewestwinds.com/book). There's also a Bene Gesseret and a Mentat, 'cause they're cool. ;)

  • http://www.KnowHowVault.com/wordpress/ Steve Lorenzo

    Thanks for the wonderful comment!

    Would you like to write a guest post on my blog?

  • http://threewestwinds.com/ Peter Frauenglass

    Heh, this took a long time to go up. I'd assumed it got lost somewhere in the aether weeks ago.

    I'd love to do a guest article sometime. I'll send it using the contact form on your about page, probably sometime later this week.

  • http://www.KnowHowVault.com/wordpress/ Steve Lorenzo

    Then you'd be welcome (anytime!)

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