Litany Against Fear

The Litany Against Fear is the Bene Gesserit litany for steadying the mind in the face of fear, a tool of their training. Paul Atreides recites it on the first pages of Dune, with a poisoned needle at his neck. (Dune)

Origins#

In Frank Herbert's Dune the litany belongs to the Bene Gesserit, who recite it against the dangers of their training and teach it to those they train, Paul and Jessica among them. (Dune)

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's prequels give it an older ancestor from the time of the Butlerian Jihad: a mantra of the City of Introspection about having no fear, since fear is the little death that kills over and over, while without it a person dies only once. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The litany#

The litany was spoken as follows: (Dune)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Jessica later recited a version that differed in its final lines: "And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." (Dune)

Use in the gom jabbar test#

Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides I, used the litany when Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam compelled him to place his right hand in a device that caused pain, holding the gom jabbar to his neck as a test of his presence of mind. The litany helped him withstand the agony. (Dune)

The trial was a test of his humanity in a qualitative sense: a being whose nature was still primarily bestial would recoil from pain and seek to flee in order to preserve itself, while one of higher nature would endure it and pass through to the other side in order to remove the threat permanently. As Mohiam framed the distinction, an animal caught in a trap might chew off its own leg to escape, but a human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, and feign death so as to kill the trapper and remove a threat to its kind. (Dune)