Have the Bene Gesseret Sisterhood and Guild Navigators been rivals?

[HarryCanyon]

Maybe or maybe not, i want to know.

[Dante]

Rivals for what? They don't really compete with each other, save perhaps for influence over those with power, and even then I imagine their interests would rarely be at odds simply because their areas of influence have little overlap.

[HarryCanyon]

That's what i'm talking about, they compete for whoever has better powers. The Guild do have the ability to make anyone travel to any part of the universe while the Bene Gesseret have future seeing powers and that sort of thing.

[Lord J]

I think that's a pretty strong simplification or possibly misunderstanding of the power associated with either party.

The BG, as all major powers, were dependent upon the Guild for spice. But that said, I doubt they had many interactions. The Guild, of course, is extremely secretive, but they don't need anything the BG has to offer. They have a rudimentary ability to see some futures (unless I misread), which the BG do not have. The BG are able to see backward through the female line, and have several breeding programs, but I don't think the Navigator selection process involves genetic testing, and they probably wouldn't be interested in that ability. The Guild is more-or-less a corporation, and the BG is (as far as most people understand) a religious order, they really have nothing in common other than the manipulation of politics (which is what Dante was referring to, not any "mystical" powers).

EDIT: Oh yes, and the BG wouldn't necessarily want prescient abilities, as they have a fairly systematic approach to the reality they perceive. Essentially, they may not want something that simply confirms their expectations.

[SandChigger]

Still, there are hints that some of the RMs, like Mohiam, had a limited form of prescience.

And there was the use of the Dune Tarot.

(Come on Harry, lay the Paul-or-Neo one on them! )

[Dante]

Lord J had it right, I was talking about power in the political sense, not the magical. As far as I see it the Bene Gesserit would only compete with the guild in terms of influence with CHOAM, the Emperor and the Landsraad (plus other similarly influential bodies). In terms of what they actually do, the two schools operate in very different arenas.

[arnoldo]

Maybe or maybe not, i want to know.

Perhaps the only time they were rivals was during the time of the conspiracy against Paul Atreides. Even though the conspirators were trying to put on a united front the reality was that they were equally conspiring against themselves. For example, when RM Mohiam is taken off a guild ship in "free space' outside Arrakis it's possible the guild had turned her over. Otherwise, why wasn't a Guild Navigator able to hide her presence onboard the ship?

[SandChigger]

(Prescience wasn't the only source of information available to Paul.)

[ErasOmnius]

But it is cool when the Guild representative asks Mohiam (Sian Phillips) to leave the Imperial Court at the beginning of the Dune movie -- as if they were rivals.