The Azhar Book judges the condition thusly "It is with reason and tem-ble experience that we call die pre-born Abomination For who knows what lost and damned persona out of our evil past may possess the living flesh7 ' The Azhar Book outlines the conditions necessary to a state of possession (Mahrana IV H-K) First a pregnant Bene Gessent breeder must ingest the Water of Life, apparently an hallucinogenic chemical which varied during the history of the order This chemical, earned m her Mood to the womb, activates the fetal psychic awareness and produces a babble of sound and sensory imagery which the un-born is unable to comprehend or assimilate At birth, this "awakened1 ' baby supposedly sees with adult comprehension because of the active, intelligent, adult memories it now carries at a conscious level The child, therefore, appears to the uninitiated as extremely precocious but to the knowledgeable as a possible Abomination Only bnght Bene Gessent children were suspect, precocious lay children were safe from scrutiny In order for the pseudo life to gain access to the child's consciousness, the child must initiate active communication by "calling" individuals The more frequently the child "calls" a persona, the stronger the persona becomes, eventually being able to intrude upon the host consciousness at will At some relatively early stage, the personae can be discerned to be either benign or malignant The malignant individuals vie for dormna uon of the host, but the benign can be persuaded to form a union called a ' 'mohala-ta " Bene Gessent training and encouragement can support the formation of a mohalata which then can serve as a protective bamer between the individual malignant persona and the host If DO mohalata is formed, the host is in danger of possession The dominant malignant persona must first take control of the mind, then the nervous system, and finally the musculature At this stage the body and mind no longer function at the host's will but are forever in the control of the pseudo-life To those not of the Bene Gessent, the actions of such a possessed" person can be construed as combinations of classic psychotic behavior, pnmarily involving schizophrenia, paranoia, and manic depression The Bene Gessent and their myth-dominated subcultures, however, do not call upon psychologists or psychiatrists to aid the afflicted person Instead, ritualistic forms of ABOMINATION trial determine Possession or Abomination, a guilty verdict brings death The Bene Gessent believing the state of Abomination and Possession to be the most evil within which a person can live, give five*' 'commandments'' by which the Sisterhood hopes to avert any occurrence of this condition They are found in The Azhar Book as "Protections Against Abomination" No woman who has become one with the Water of Life may thereafter bear a child No woman may ever feel safe from the threat of possession, being more susceptible than a man No woman with cfcUd can participate in any form of die Water of Life ceremony on pain of death No child born trader the accursed conditions shall be suffered to live No adult found to be possessed, even if born outside of the condiaoo of abomination, shall be suffered to live Almost all information on Abomination comes from Bene Gessent documents Yet, even though die Sisterhood created the appellation, there ate questions which remained unanswered For example, most one be an Abomination before one can be possessed'' If so, why are all the Bene Gessents trained in precise nerve end muscle control7 The B G Basic Thttnmg Manual states in its introduction that 'only through profound prana-btodu control can we be protected against possession " Perhaps possession and abomination were terms used indiscriminately to classify violent abnormal behavior or behavior threatening to the group as a whole, allowing the Bene Gessent to avoid more expensive and time-consuming methods of diagnosis and treatment In die Bene Gessent open files in the Wallach IX library, Abomination Inquiry folios show surveillance of seven hundred suspected people between the Great Revolt and the God Emperor, five hundred and twenty of whom were executed The file on Aha Atreides indicates that the most serious cases arose after the introduction of the ftranen Water of Life into the Sisterhood's rituals This information corresponds with the recent hypothesis that die Atreides line earned a defective chromosome introduced by the Mduam line, a defect susceptible to the chemical composition of melange and the fluid of the dying ' Little Maker" of the Fremen culture Leto n acknowledges a dominant pseudo life (a 'Harum") m his recently discovered Journals but so far there is no evidence to show that Ghanima was afflicted {For an extensive discussion of the Bene Gessent view of the Alia Case, see ATREIDES, ALIA, AS ABOMINATION ) Further references AZHAR BOOK Anon The Azhar Book ed K R Barauz AS 49 (Grumman United Worlds) Pyer Bmzvair ed iumma of Ancient Belief and Prac nee (Bolchef Collegium Tamo) Sin Quadnn Static Barriers of the Cerebral Cortex (Richese U of Bailey Press) Psechhlat Manm The Correlation of Mystic States and Psychotic States m Ancient Mythos Abomination, Possession or Psychosis'* Antares Journal of Medicine 99 135-168 AGARVES, BOER.