The myth of a messiah present in all the sagas from Superman and Star Wars to the Matrix (Warning this article may contain spoilers)
The arrival of a being, chosen, capable of ordering the course of a community for the advent of a golden age has been a constant desire in the history of mankind and a latent myth in the great cinematographic sagas: Kalel from Kripton, Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars, Neo from the Matrix .
Either because it has ¨the divine right of kings¨ or because an ancient prophecy has predicted it, this myth has been the object of investigation by important anthropologists, philosophers and historians and it could be said that even characters without any mystical environment such as James Bond or Indianas Jones are kind of chosen for being the protagonist. There are also antimessiahs or double negatives as in the case of Dracula.
George Lucas said that science fiction was not to solve scientific problems or to be scientifically plausible but to talk about human problems, in this sense the Bene Gesserit Brotherhood works in Dune. This brotherhood of mystical women who consume the Melange spice, a substance capable of awakening oracular powers of high cognition and near immortality, seek to access the memories of their male ancestors instead of the unconscious that is forbidden to them, in order to carry out their. secret genetic program: the rise of her male equivalent, the kwisatz Haderach, the savior, the messiah.
The missionary Protector has implanted the messianic belief among the Fremen, the only reckless and self-sacrificing tribes capable of supporting life and danger near the giant worms that produce the melange spice they must collect, they are then the equivalent of the exploited working class of the real life.
A decade ago, according to the researcher and engineer Fernando Conde Torrens in his book " Year 303 they invent Christianity" Jesus Christ and the gospels were commissioned by order of Emperor Constantine I to a group of scribes, Eusebio de Cesarea and Lactancio, as a commission to create a new religion in the Roman Empire. Stealing from the Jewish apocalyptic, the book of Enoch and the prophecies of Isaiah the myth of the messiah for the making of his new saga: the story of Jesus Christ, the moving legend of the crucified Christ. The scribes Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea close to the emperor not only created the legend with the apostles and the many miracles but also motivated by the hatred they felt towards the Greeks and the Jews, they portrayed them as the villains of history.
In other words, in addition to stealing the copyright of the tradition of the Hebrew people, they also defamed it with ignominious slander. But this historical scientific concern is not new; As early as the 19th century, philosophers of historians doubted the historical existence of Jesus Christ. James Fraser, the famous anthropologist, in his book ¨The Golden Bough¨ manages to determine the concept of the “divine right of kings” and mythological gods with the harvest rites and solar worship. For example, Osiris is green in color because it represents the stalk of wheat and in its ritualistic, that is, the Egyptian one already appears in the Eucharistic ceremony of bread and wine as blood and meat that was later transplanted to the Christian ceremony.
That is to say, the messianic tradition is not original to the Hebrew people but probably taken from older regions and or among which would be the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, and a long etcetera.
Game of Thrones is often compared to the story of the War of the Two Roses in medieval and early Renaissance England, between the houses of Lancaster and York.
The Dune saga could also be associated with this historical war: Paul Atreides comes from one of the aristocratic houses of the disputed saga and in the midst of Machiavellian intrigues. It therefore has dynastic rights; This concept, that of the divine right of royalty, was studied by Sigmund Freud among others in the theory of ¨The primordial man¨: in a remote past between prehistoric and civilizational, almost cave-dwelling, in the midst of the vital needs of the primitive tribe the need arose of someone with more audacity than others to solve the problems of the community. He was the patriarch and the demiurge, the ruler of fire, the protector, the best hunter, and a budding scientist and doctor. Who when dying left his community desolate and without a guide, but also that with his death caused a horrible horror that originated the first funeral rituals, becoming an archetype and a demigod. Where the gods and mythology come from are very difficult questions to unravel.
Not only does Paul Atreides have a divine right but he is also the chosen one, the messiah, the Kwisats Haderach. However, all these ancient and traditional concepts are questionable in the light of the contemporary scientific and democratic mentality, they are almost superstitions that still condition us socially.
And not only that can also be dangerous, for populist and demagogic use, it is enough to remember the most traumatic historical events of the 20th century when comparing them semiotically with the Dune and Star Wars sagas: The galactic republic resembles the Weimar republic, indecisive, dangerously threatened in its trade routes and finally devastated by a Machiavellian chancellor who manages to establish a galactic empire just as happened in Europe in 1933. Although the chancellor in real life, the historian stole or appropriated for his theatrical purposes a concept as Hebrew as messianism, another case of copyright theft.
Hitler believed himself a Germanic messiah in the midst of a delusional climate of fanaticism for the esoteric instilled in a behaviorist way in the people. Let us hope that the premiere of Dune will be able to motivate in the youth the spirit by the search for compassion towards those who suffer the injustices of the world and the appeasement of despotic emperors.