ring those anxious, almost disastrous years between Muad'Dib's disappearance into the desert and Leto II's ATRE1DES, JESSICA 62 ATRE1DES JESSICA assumption of the Imperial throne: throughout that near-decade Jessica proved herself a formidable diplomat, intriguer, and (mostly psychological) wamor, effectively countering even her own daughter's plots agonist A&eides ideals Alia would not have dwindled into Abomination, nor Paul into Muad'Dib and then The Preacher, had they, like their mother, wholly embraced the Archetypal role of Medium As Medium Jessica bndged the unconscious world and the human community, mediating these vast collectivities bv her perfectly balanced and tuned self-consciousness Lady Jessica became Medial because the Fremen, seeking a new Reverend Mother, sent her into a perilous spice-trance Melange catalyzed her evolution, but Jessica's already Archetypal psyche stabilized and vivified it as Helaira she infused her Medial wisdom with personal caring, while as Amazon she preserved independent individual selfhood against the onslaughts of the collective unconscious Conversely, as Medium she maintained a healthily cosmic perspective on her personal and social involvements Her Medial energies saved Jessica from the centripetal egotism which crushed her children On the other hand, Jessica's Medial experiences introduced her to her psyche s very core-to the genuine, Archetypal Motherhood that die Bene Gessent had almost persuaded her did not and could not exist Even after she had understood her way past the Sisterhood's other pronouncements, she con tinued to believe the Bene Gessent dogma that Archetypes were public relations illusions whose only use was to manipulate the gullible Jessica's residual skepticism was seriously debilitated when as Medium she encountered the Great Mother within herself, her doubts fefi utterly away when as Mother centered in her new Material self-awareness, she sensed the Great Mother as an extenor presence as well-when she knew the grand, essential shaping force mat Liet-Kynes, his Fremen followers, and above all her God Emperor grandson so passionately sought Mother Jessica realized mat humans (not to mention Worms) neither originate nor control generalivity in any of its manifestations She understood that all life-forms and all life-processes-including her own roles as lover, leader, and mother-really are channels for the Great Mother s creative and sustaining energies This was the teaching she imparted to Farad n, the teaching to which she devoted her mature life In our age when Arrakeen culture is imbued with the Motherly spirit, one can scarcely believe, much less comprehend, the resistance which Mother Jessua confronted in her contemporaries In that desolate era masculinity still ruled throughout the Impenum, though onlv as the debased confraternity of brutal pragmatism (expressed by the Har-konnens and Sardaukar) and mechanistic ra tionahty (the spirit of the Mentals and Tleilaxu) Most people then retained the tra ditional belief that intelligence, power, order- indeed, civilization itself-were essentially masculine property, but they knew, too, that even the best most vitally Archetypal man hood was somehow insufficient, for Duke Leto Atreides, who perfectly incarnated whole Archetypal manliness, died defeated So Jessica lived at the time when masculinity was losing its exclusive hold on people's psyches and feminine consciousness was just begin ning to come into its own Given its long-term investment in male chauvinism, the popular mind understand ably hesitated to acknowledge the importance of being feminine Partial glimpses were easiest women were tolerable as Hetaira (witness Gamont), or (more reluctantly) as Amazons (witness the Fish Speakers), or (most reluctantly) as Mediums (witness the Fremen Reverend Mothers) Motherhood, in its pure Archetypal glory, was simply unthinkable The reasons for these psychological blocks have been well explained merely masculine thinking is esoteric, directed toward discovering and working with the facts of the external, (especially) physical world By contrast, feminine consciousness is esotenc, or interior, it deals with the inwardness of reality Meeting the Great Mother, as Jessica did, means realizing that the inward shapes and sustains the outward-that the physical universe has a spiritual core Such a realization is inevitably shattering to the esotenc ATREIDES, JESSICA 63 ATREIDES JESSICA outlook from the merely masculine per spective the only Mother is the Temble Mother Jessica's children and grandchildren were the most pitiable yet instructive victims of the then-pervasive anti-Maternal bias Paul, first modern man to liberate his feminine intelligence, nonetheless imprisoned himself and the Bremen in Muad'Dib's stereotypical masculinity and eventually blinded himself rather man face the ultimate Motherhood he feared Aha rejected Motherhood because she identified it with Jessica's invasion of her pre-born mind and the consequent Medial awareness that made her a freak, she used her Hetairal energies to escape Motherhood and her Amazonian energies to fight rt Leto II wat> comfortable with the Hetaira, Amazon Medium, and Mother within himself, but was sure that the Terrible Mother governed all natural events, he sacrificed his subjective humanity to buy time from the objective monster Mother Nature he imagined.