The Warrior Religion project is some of the most popular poasts on RESAVAGER. It’s more an exploratory effort at this point that I hope to focus down upon. Admittedly, I lose focus on certain aspects. What I want to do today, however, is lay out what Frank Herbert’s idea of the WARRIOR RELIGION was as it appeals to most of us who have read DUNE. Much of the modern appeal of the Warrior Religion comes from the recent movie adaptation specifically the scene showing the Sardaukar home world where they are preparing soldiers for the ambush on the Atreides. The quote from Paul Atreides in the book and the movie concerning the Warrior Religion is actually about the Fremen who get a very inaccurate betrayal in the movies.
The Sardaukar no doubt adhere to a Warrior Religion, but one in decline during the Dune story. They’re disillusioned with the emperor and find themselves being dominated by the true Warrior Religion on Arakkis. It’s hard for me to meme the Fremen because the movie adaptation does them disservice compared to the Sardaukar. What must be understood is that both these races are related. They’re descended from a race called the Zensunni wanderers. They fled from planet to planet during the war with the thinking machines to escape persecution by the imperial forces. These wanderers went to many planets including Selusa Secondus, the homeworld of the Sardaukar, and ends on Arakkis, the homeworld of the Fremen.
With this tedious background information out of the way, we must look at what Herbert’s Warrior Religion looked like. The way you need to remember is that the Sardaukar are comparable to the Europeans whereas the Fremen who kept drifting further into the frontier became something more. Related, but different. The Fremen way developed out of the harsh conditions they were born into which helped forge their martial NOMOS which we will explore here. The harsh realities of Arakkis turned the religion of the Zensunni into something more PAGAN. The Fremen began to see the sandworms on Arakkis as manifestations of GOD. The tenets of their religion began to match more those of an Aryan mannerbund than an actual faith.
