the void does in fact belong to women

put a frame around it and belongs to whoever buys it

So it’s been said ad nauseam at this point one of the inspirations behind “Dune” was Frank Herbert’s observation that messianism comes from the desert. This isn’t fully correct imo (although the messianic or prophetic or apocalyptic religions Herbert must’ve had in mind may look like “desert” movements to western eyes, or to those who take the religions’ origin stories at face-value). Judaism originates in the pastoral-agrarian hill country of Judea, and reached its full development in the urbanized, imperial polis of hellenistic Jerusalem. Christianity took shape in the coastal trade cities of Rome. The rise of Islam corresponds to the emergence of centralized urban dominance in Arabia, linked to the historic civilization-centers of Rome and Persia. It’s true that all three religions have origin stories based in the desert, but these are more from a city-dwelling outsider’s perspective ex. Moses, Jesus and Muhammed go into the wilderness to be purified, tested, receive the word of the god, away from the corrupted urban world, to which they inevitably return. But messianism and prophecy and apocalypticism seem more the products of complex, stratified urban societies (usually in periods of imperial transition) not desert nomadism, which is typically pagan. This is why it’s so unconvincing in “Dune” that Paul Atreides would amass a fanatic cult among nomadic tribesmen. What Frank Herbert got right is that messianism comes about in sites of imperial conflict over trade, which, in the world of antiquity, meant over some form of spice.