ad'Dib forever changed that culture Thus, for all intents, the ancient culture of the Fremen ceased with his rise to power What was that culture1' And why was Paul Atreides able first to seize control of it and then destroy it? The answers to both of these question he, once again, in the Piemen's religious beliefs and how they interpreted the world around them From what is understood of the Zensunm Wanderers, it can be sur mised that their religion was severe in the extreme It demanded close obedience to an authority figure who must have literally had the power of life and death over his subjects Such authority does not appear to have been lightly earned A leader called Nalb, had to conform closely to his followers' notion of what a leader should be Tats, while he had the power of an absolute ruler, a Naib could easily be challenged by any of his subjects if his behavior seemed at aB inappropriate Moreover, from the records left by Pardot Kynes, such challenges seem to have been frequent Thus the Fremen held a paradoxical notion of social order the leader of any group was supreme, bat only if everyone who belonged to that group wanted him to be It appears then that a balance of order and anarchy coexisted in Fremefl culture Clues as to the nature of that balance exist, the most significant clue being the Fremen's view of Arrakis itself To the Fremen the planet was Shai-Hulud, the deity or spirit of Arrakis It stood for the Sandworm which was the essence of all sandworms, Shai-Hujod was "fee Old Man of the Desert," "Old Fattier Eternity," and "Grandfather of tiie Desert" The sandworms of Arrakis were both the bane and the boon of Arrakis A roan walking in the open desert had to fear attracting them because a worm would sure ly devour him But sandworrns were also the Fremen's chaef mode of transportation Skill folly caught and ndden, a sandworm could transport many Fremen hundreds of kilome- ters in a rather short time Even more important, sandworms supplied the Fremen with the major ingredient of their rites A small sandworm drowned in water produced the Water of I ife a poison which, drunk by a Reverend Mother, became a powerful narcotic This narcotic, in turn was used by a Fremen sietch in its tau orgies As several scholars of ancient religions point out, the nature of the 'Water of Life is consonant with practices of many ancient peoples who in one form or another kill their gods and digest their bodies Again the point is that while the Fremen were more than ready to stand in awe ot then" god, they were equally willing to use him (or it) even to the point of putting the god's living form to death Thus, for the Fremen there did not appear to be any contradiction in total sub mission to authority (whether human or godlike), on the one hand, and open ques tiomng of the authority or, even callous destruction of it, on the other Each of these seeming extremes was part of a whole to the Fremen, and it would appear that in each the opposite also existed One could conclude that, for the Fremen, order was anarchy and anarchy was order This view would eliminate in their minds at least the apparent contradiction in their behavior toward human leaders and gods alike This view, moreover, gives an impor tant insight into iheir ultimate vision of the major forces in their lives starting with Shai-Hulud and ending with the most elemental natural forces of Arrakis the Fremen believed that all were utterly indifferent to ward whether they lived or died Such forces simply existed Shai Hulud, whether literal sandworm or personified Arrakis, might bring harm or good to the Fremen but whatever the end result it was not on Shai Hulud's mind to do either To put it another way if a Fremen said a certain death was "the will of Shai Hulud," he or she did not mean that Shai-Hulud wanted someone to die Instead, to a Fremen these words simply mean that ' that is the way things are ' The Fremen did not however, conclude that there was no value or meaning to their lives Instead, they created both value and meaning by devoting all their ambitions and FREMEN CULTURE 229 FREMEN CULTURE energies to the survival of the sietch the center of Fremen society While members of every sietch called themselves Fremen, that name had less meaning to them than the name of the sietch each belonged to There is no accurate way of determining how many sietches existed even in the time of Paul Muad'Dib Except for his own sietch and any that might threaten its survival, no individual Fremen was interested in how many others existed Moreover, it now seems t-lear that the Fremen were masters in hiding the existence of then" sietches from all off worlders, and thus no records exist It is deduced, however, that many hundreds of these units did exist, and that each sietch was capable of containing many thousands of people The sietch was both a huge extended family and a government It demanded and received great loyalty from each of its members From the journals left by Leto II, researchers have been able to piece together several facts concerning the relationship of the individual to the sietch All Fremen defined their lives by membership m a sietch It literally gave one a place in the world Thus, to commit an act which brought banishment from the sietch was to commit psychological as well as physical suicide In all things the good of the sietch was the final determinant of behavior Those actions which furthered the good were to be encouraged, while those that threatened the good were more man discouraged Such actions inevitably led to the death of the person responsible whether or not that person realized the implications of those actions Like Arrakis.