As the skills of a Bene Gesserit are as desirable as an alliance with the Sisterhood itself, they are able to charge a fee to teach women from Great Houses, and install some of their initiates as wives and concubines to their advantage.

[6][7][8] In Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, the Bene Gesserit are a secretive matriarchal order who have achieved superhuman abilities through physical and mental conditioning and the use of the drug melange.

Herbert notes that over 10,000 years before the events of Dune, in the chaotic time after the Butlerian Jihad and before the unveiling of the Orange Catholic Bible, the Bene Gesserit "consolidated their hold upon the sorceresses, explored the subtle narcotics, developed prana-bindu training and conceived the Missionaria Protectiva, that black arm of superstition.

"[9] Millennia later in Dune, the Bene Gesserit base of power is the Mother School on the planet Wallach IX, whose graduates are fit mates for Emperors, and whose specially trained Truthsayers can detect falsehood.

Having halted all spice production and thus making his own stockpile the only source of melange left in the universe, Leto is able to maintain firm control over the various factions and effects a "forced tranquility".

New opposition arrives in the form of a violent matriarchal order calling themselves the Honored Matres, a ruthless and brutal force who seek domination over the Old Empire and who do not use or rely on melange for their powers.

She immediately succeeds Odrade as Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit, joining the two forces under a single leader in an uneasy truce that, it is hoped, will be able to defeat the unknown enemy.

In Hunters of Dune, the 2006 continuation of the series by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, Murbella adopts the new title of Mother Commander and struggles to bring the opposing factions of her New Sisterhood together.

Among the Bene Gesserit, some are willing to accept the merger with the Honored Matres, while others oppose allying with their enemies; a group of dissenters led by Reverend Mother Sheeana having fled Chapterhouse aboard a no-ship upon Murbella's ascension to leadership.

These "Valkyries" are able to effect Hellica's defeat, galvanizing many dissenters into finally joining Murbella's cause against the unknown enemy, now revealed to be the resurrected thinking machines thought destroyed 15,000 years before.

The New Sisterhood's fleet of warships succumbs to Face Dancer sabotage, but is saved from thinking machine attack by a host of Guild Navigators in heighliners, brought together by the Oracle of Time, Norma Cenva.

The ordeal also makes Raquella the first to access Other Memory and use the power of Voice; she later establishes the Bene Gesserit, instituting a similar ritualized poisoning to unlock the same abilities in others.

Ambitious young Valya Harkonnen has hopes of using her Bene Gesserit training to complete her family's vendetta against Vorian Atreides and his entire bloodline.

Valya is one of the Sisters trusted with the records of Raquella's breeding program, which are maintained by a secret cache of forbidden computers, concealed in a cave outside the Sisterhood School on Rossak.

Salvador has several dozen Sisters executed and disbands the Sisterhood, except for Dorotea's Orthodox followers, who return to the Imperial capital on Salusa Secundus to serve as court Truthsayers.

He takes control of both the empire and the Bene Gesserit breeding program in Children of Dune, and begins his own transformation into a human-sandworm hybrid to give himself the time he needs for his Golden Path to be fully realized.

Over 10,000 years before the events of Dune, the Sorceresses of Rossak had started keeping detailed breeding records circa 400 B.G., trying to improve the potency and prevalence of their telekinetic powers.

In Sandworms of Dune (2007), written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, Duncan Idaho is revealed to be the final Kwisatz Haderach destined to bring together humans and thinking machines.

They have noted the Taoist principle that whatever rises must fall; and so rather than taking direct control of the human race, they instead manipulate the social and political order with subtlety and insinuation, often using extraordinarily long-term stratagems spanning generations.

[5] In fact, when Leto meets Hwi Noree, the Ixian ambassador obviously bred and trained to charm him, he realizes "that part of her education had been conducted by the Bene Gesserit.

The prequel novel Dune: The Battle of Corrin by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson establishes that the first Bene Gesserit to access Other Memory had been Raquella Berto-Anirul, the founder of the order.

In Heretics of Dune, Reverend Mother Odrade explains to Sheeana that planetary populations exposed to long-term Voice control learn ways to adapt to it, and can no longer be manipulated.

The Bene Gesserit can easily determine a person's origins and root language by analyzing their speech patterns, cadence, and pacing, as Jessica does when she realizes that a visiting Spacing Guild banker is a Harkonnen agent.

[4] Bene Gesserit specifically trained as Truthsayers are able to determine whether someone is lying by analyzing their speech, body language, and physical signs like pulse and heart rate.

In Dune, Lady Fenring is instructed by the Bene Gesserit to seduce Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in order to "preserve the bloodline" by retrieving his genetic material through conception.

When Paul later fights Feyd to the death, Jessica advises her son to temporarily stun him using the word-sound Uroshnor, typically implanted in a dangerous person who has been prepared by the Bene Gesserit.

In Chapterhouse Dune the order has learned the Honored Matre method from Murbella and use it for their own purposes, specifically to awaken the memories within the Miles Teg ghola.

In Dune, Lady Jessica is pregnant when she undergoes the spice agony while among the Fremen; her resulting daughter, Alia, is born a full Reverend Mother, the mind of an adult in a child's body.

In Children of Dune, an adult Alia eventually succumbs to the ancestral ego of her grandfather, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, who wants nothing more than the destruction of the Atreides, and is given another opportunity, from the inside, to realize it.

[27]In Mycelium Running, mycologist Paul Stamets argues that Herbert was influenced by tales of María Sabina and the sacred mushroom cults of Mexico in creating the Bene Gesserit.