Dune saga: Bene Gesserit philosophy origins?

Question

The Bene Gesserit sisterhood show similarities to orders of Catholic or Buddhist nuns, with their discipline, austerity, and high levels of education and organization ("gesserit" possibly alluding to the Jesuits), yet they also appear to have some sort of Middle Eastern influence. Their name could be Latin for "one who conducted herself properly", yet the word 'bene' is also very similar to Hebrew/Arabic for "children of -". E.g., in Arabic the name could mean "children of the peninsula". Some other points of interest:

• their ideal evolved human is a messiah-figure referred to with a Hebrew term, K'fitzat haDerech, which means (very appropriately) "a shortcut";
• in spite of not being very well-liked or trusted, BG's skills are so useful that sisters are important members of most courts and other associations of elites (like Jewish courtiers during the Middle Ages);
• very interested in bloodlines and lineages, similar to Jews and Muslims;
• they embody some common anti-Semitic stereotypes, the most prominent being their association with sinister magic ("witches"), use of casuistry ("Talmudic logic"), and that all BG members, wherever they are, comprise a secret cabal loyal only to itself, that conspires to control humanity and its development, for its own mysterious ends.

Given all this, what are the BG's origins (philosophically/religously, rather than ethnically) in the Dune universe?

Answer 1

The following refers only to the six books written by Frank Herbert.

First some facts:

1. The Bene Gesserit maintain a breeding program.

2. The Bene Gesserit are very sexual. Sexual techniques are part of their training and they employ specially trained males for their own sexual satisfaction in their bases. They actively command their members to have themselves impregnated by selected males for their breeding program and use their wiles to achieve their goals.

3. The ultimate goal of the Bene Gesserit is preserving and improving mankind. This is mostly elaborated on in Chapterhouse: Dune. The breeding program, the Kwisatz Haderach, the messianic undertones and power are only means to this end.

4. The Bene Gesserit regard religion mostly as a tool to manipulate other people, organisations and mankind as a whole. They employ “religious engineers” for this purpose.

   An example (which may be considered a spoiler for Heretics of Dune):

   On one occasion, the Bene Gesserit find out that the Bene Tleilax follow the Zensunni faith, a syncretism of Islam and Buddhism. One of them instantly starts to pretend to adhere to the same faith to convince the leader of the Bene Tleilax to collaborate with them.

5. I cannot remember any Bene Gesserit performing some sort of worship or mentioning God in way that implies its existence.

6. The Bene Gesserit were women.

Points 4 and 5 suggest that the Bene Gesserit do not originate from some sort of religion (at least one that considers itself a religion). Points 1, 2 and 6 make a lot of religions unlikely as origins, namely all anti-evolutionary, anti-sexual or anti-women religions.

Points 1, 2 and 4 are certainly controversial in most if not all of today’s societies; point 6 is at least peculiar. Taken together, these points should exclude almost any contemporary or past notable organisation that is open about their goals. At least I would not know any organisation that is even remotely similar to the Bene Gesserit.

From this follows that if the Bene Gesserit originate from any contemporary organisation, it would be secret or at least keep its goals secret – i.e., your typical secret order from conspiracy theories (with the exception of point 3). This fits insofar as the Bene Gesserit still keep most of their goals secret when the events of Dune happen.

Answer 2

Some alternate info.

Herbert uses "Bene" for at least one other order. It seems to mean something like "school" in the Dune Universe.

There are Jews in the Dune universe and one Jewish woman is a wild reverend mother. Her bene gesserit training is a source of conflict with her father who seems to think Bene Gesserit is not compatible with their Jewish faith.

Bene Gesserits are trying to breed a Kwistats Haderach. They don't consider this hypothetical man to be a Messiah. It's the Fremen who are looking for a Messiah and happen to find it in the Kwisats Haderach. There is some reference that the Bene Gesserit had been the ones to add a Messiah to the Fremen religion, but Messiah was not a theme for Bene Gesserit themselves.

Herbert had a lot of Muslim overtones as in Fremen being circumcised and the Butlerian Jihad.

A Bene Dessert mother didn't automatically make a girl another Bene Gesserit. They were recruited and they were women only, so they weren't a population.

Conclusion:
They were more like what he called them, "an order". They were more analogous to Knights Templar or the Knights of Malta, crossed with kung-fu masters in Chinese stories. Not that they went around karate chopping everyone, but they reached almost superhuman abilities by intense secret training and discipline and were part of a secretive but powerful organization.