Capeworld Comics

The Nightwatcher (civilian identity unknown) wrote a handy FAQ for his mirabology 101 class. Many freshmen owe their grades to this handy guide, though Nightwatcher has never been known as a tough teacher.

 

He’s learned from experience that students are much more likely to actually read his FAQ if he makes a game out of it. He introduces his FAQ to the students by splitting the list into several parts and giving them to his energy-form harings to hide throughout the campus. Students are assigned to hunt them down on their first day of mirabology 101, and as many of them are new to the campus, this helps them get oriented just like the Candlelight gargoyles.

 

The FAQ follows. 

 

NOTE: If you’re in Nightwatcher’s class, don’t look! It’ll do you a world of good to walk around the campus.

 

What is the Study of Superpowers Called?

 

Let’s hit the ground running. You’re in my mirabology class, so you should probably know what mirabology is, especially when you’re  going to be studying it all year. And then when I’m done with you, you’re going to go on to have another mirabology class, and another, and another. Every year you’ll have to take a mirabology class of some kind or another. We live in a world of superpowers and we want to make sure you know how to keep your head above water in this crazy world of ours.

 

Mirabology is, for a basic definition, the study of superpowers.

 

Mirabology includes several disciplines such as physical mirabology which deals with measuring and quantifying superpowers under given physical constraints, meaning you measure how hot Disco Inferno’s flames are and how fast the Gingerbread Man can run. Cosmological mirabology deals with the origins of mirabology, where superpowers come from, why people get them, and how they function in our universe. Social mirabology deals with how societies use and regulate superpowers, how countries like our own and Japan use a minarchist approach to superpowers while other countries like those incorporated with the Earth State use heavy regulations. And psychological mirabology deals with how superpowers shape and are in turn shaped by the human mind. Why do some people with superpowers use them productively while others waste them? Why do some people not use their superpowers at all? Psychological mirabology seeks to answer these questions.

 

Now, we’ve talked about what mirabology means, but now lets talk about what mirabology means as a word.

 

Mirabology means “the study of miracles.” The suffix -ology means “study of” and the root “mira” comes from the Latin and means “a wonder” or “to wonder.” Our words miracles comes from the Latin miraculum which means objects of wonder. A miracle is something wonderous.

 

Mirabology thus means the study of objects of wonder. Doesn’t that sound cool? I think there’s nothing more wonderous than superpowers. But then again, I teach about superpowers for a living, so I’m biased. I bet you anything Dr. Bowie would tell you that there’s nothing more wonderous than numbers.

 

Some people say that superpowers are too wonderful. You all are old enough to be aware of the world around you. You turn on the news and what do you see, some idiot-of-the-day around your age with a BOL t-shirt misusing his powers. You see “The Eternal Rebel” knock over a bank or “Kid Zero” turn a supermarket to dust, and what do they say when they’re carted away? “I wanted to make things interesting.” “There’s not point to things.” “What does it matter what I do with all the old superguys flying around, going everywhere, doing everything?”

 

When something’s wonderful, it has a shine to it. It attracts attention. In the light of that shine, you can lose sight of what’s important around you. Boys and girls your age do that every day. But here at Martin’s we’re going to teach you how superpowers can make everything shine. You will learn how to use superpowers to create, build, maintain, and protect. You will learn how to use superpowers constructively and harmoniously. You will learn how to brighten your world, not dim it.

 

Is Mirabology a Controversial Term?

 

You might have heard this in Old Rich’s class, but in case you haven’t, yes, mirabology was and remains a controversial term.

 

The controversy starts with the name itself.

 

Mirabology is a science, hence that –ology suffix, like with psychology, paleontology, archeology, etc. But is rooted in the word “miracles,” and miracles imply a suspension of the natural order. Something everyday, ordinary, and part-of-the-program isn’t a miracle. If the sky suddenly turned purple, you could call that a miracle. If you made an A in Mr. Rich’s class, you could call that a miracle.

 

So what’s the problem? Why can’t we have a science of miracles?

 

Here’s a definition you should remember from Ms. Cryptic’s introductory science class: Science is “the empirical study of phenomena through the use of observation and testing to establish repeatable explanatory models.” That’s straight from Momma Bird’s mouth. Science is, basically, about finding patterns that you can share with others. You don’t do science with miracles. Miracles aren’t repeatable. That they happen rarely, that they’re once-in-a-lifetime things is the point of miracles. 

 

So how did we end up with such a tricky name for mirabology in the first place? You know, Ms. Garrett is so fortunate teaching biology. 

 

“What’s biology?”

 

“The study of life.”

 

“What does bio mean?”

 

“Life.”

 

It’s that easy for some sciences.

 

We have the mirabologists of the late 19th century, the thaumaturgists, to blame for the naming mess. The thaumaturgists believed in personal revelation over empirical fact. They were mystics and occultists and achieved hyperstasis by telepathically following the dreams of a mummy Samuel Mathers named Abramelin, one of the many incarnations of the being called Baltim, They followed these dreams up into the Astral, up to the source of superpowers, the hyperkeimenon.

 

They called this trick of theirs the “Abramelin operation,” and it worked. It really gave people superpowers. But it only worked for some. If you did the Abramelin operation, if you did all the meditations and linked your mind to Abramelin, then you might, might hit the hyperkeimenon jackpot. But results could not be reliably replicated. In 1800’s we were a long, long way from having superpower ray treatments. We were a long way just from having the risky, 1% chance of death mass-produced supersoldier armies of the 1940’s.

 

When you can’t have objective, replicable results, you can’t do science–thus many thaumaturgists argued. What they did wasn’t science, it was magic, it was thaumaturgy. What they did rely on was the subjectivity of mystical, religious experience, not the objective, concrete facts of science. There were unmeasurable, unobservable factors that influenced the Abramelin operation–your will, your heart, your imagination.

 

Now, some thaumaturgists thought of the Abramelin operation as a science. The key is in the name itself–operation, like a mathematical operation. Aleister Crowley (he’s the guy that led the Golden Dawn-Thelema alliance against the Theosophists in the late 19th century shadow war) in particular believed that thaumaturgy was a science. His very definition of thaumaturgy called it a science. “Thaumaturgy is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity to the will.” But other thaumaturgists believed that the Abramelin operation was completely divorced from science. This would change after the Great War in the Air of the 1910s.

 

Following the Great War in the Air, the thaumaturgists felt that the way they explained superpowers and the Abramelin operation to lay people outside their organizations had contributed to the war. Recall from your history classes that one of the chief causes of the Great War was fear of hyperstasis. People were developing superpowers and the people with the best understanding of the how and why were saying it was an unknowable, unobservable, unmeasurable process. That scared people, and scared people are quick to look to toward other people offering quick and simple solutions to their fear, solutions like “Hey, lets go bomb New York and take their gaeite. We need gaeite to protect ourselves, and if we let the Americans stockpile it, they’re probably going to sell it to our enemies in Europe. We either take it from them or take it later in the form of bullets in our back.”

 

The pointy hats were cool though, I’ll give the Germans that.

 

The thaumaturgists feared that in using occult and mystical language they had caused people to fear superpowers as something alien, unnatural, and dangerous. You know how upset Ms. Cryptic gets when someone says “superpowers break physics?” After the Great War in the Air, the thaumaturgists felt the same way.

 

The laws of physics are explanatory models. They arise to explain observed phenomena and when the observed phenomena changes, the laws update to explain the changes. There’s no such thing as physics cops. I don’t have to pay a fine when my harings “break” the laws of physics by dancing on the side of buildings.

 

I do have to pay a fine when they steal a passerby’s coat and turn it into a drawing, but that’s beside the point.

 

The thaumaturgists wanted to present superpowers as scientific and so they replaced the term thaumaturgy, which meant the ability to work miracles, ironically, with mirabology to create a term that sounded more scientific and “normal.”

 

It’s the -ology suffix. It’s like a white coat, it just screams science.

 

But yeah, mirabology started as an attempt to sound more scientific. Can you believe it?

 

Some say the thaumaturgists didn’t go far enough. Alternatives to mirabology have been proposed throughout the decades. Some people say the name should be changed to “cratosology.” Cratos comes from the Greek and means great strength, so cratosology would be the study of the great strength of superpowers. I’m personally not a fan. I think cratos feeds into the stereotype of superpowers as being “strong.” I personally think people should think of superpowers as being “clever” instead. But then again, I’m biased. Have you seen my harings? They aren’t exactly built like prize fighters. I have to be clever with how I use them or supervillians will eat me for supper.

 

Other people say the name should be changed to “kairosology,” and I got to admit, that’s a pretty good one. Kairos comes from the Greek  and means to seize upon an opportune moment. Kairos is the combination of a perfect opportunity and a perfect choice. When you have the perfect shot to make a game-winning goal and you make the goal, that’s kairos. Ideally, superpowers should be a kairos to you. They should be a big opportunity to express yourself, to change the world for the better, and an opportunity you take full advantage of.

 

What’s my personal take on the controversy? I think mirabology may not be a precise term for what it studies, but it is a precise term for how it feels to partake in mirabology. Here’s a quote from Dr. Hercules Stone which backs me up. He’s the Princes of Dawn guy. You’ll be reading a lot from him this year not just in my class but in your history class. You’ll like him, he’s fun. He actually slept inside a mummy sarcophagus and got in a fight with Caliban atop the Eiffel Tower.

 

“I shall support the term mirabology to my dying breath, come what hordes of pedants may! We can either call a flying man a “subjectively controlled anomalous physical phenomena” or we can call him what he plainly is–a miracle. The average man sees a superhuman in action and calls him a miracle because he has eyes–he has not yet been blinded by perfunctory scholasticism. To those that seek to kill the term mirabology nothing can be a miracle. They would stand before God almighty just as they would a turnip. They would look in the very face of God and feel nothing. They would feel neither awe nor fear. They would stare sleepily as I suspect they do at everything they encounter in life. But I am not so bloodless as to feel as much as a rock does. When I study superpowers, I feel awe and I feel fear. I feel the miracle! And no academic myrmidon shall divest me of my feelings!”

 

–Dr. Hercules Stone, Princes of Dawn

 

Where do superpowers come from?

 

Superpowers come from the hyperkeimenon. That sounds like it might be a hard thing to figure out, but it’s really simple–“hyper” as in above and “keimenon” as in thing, so “the thing above.”

 

In the time-before-time, in a place-not-a-place, beings called the First-to-think descended from the highest reaches of the Astral. They went down from the presence of the Eye of Light, down from the base of the Summit of All Things, down from the chimeric cliffs of the Cataracts of Ego, and down from the flickering Dreamlands. They went further than they had ever gone before. They descended into our physical reality.

 

If all that sounded weird, be glad that you’ll only be covering the Astral as it pertains to superpowers in this class. All the geography-that-isn’t-geography and history-that-isn’t history gets covered in Astral cosmology 101 with Form Master Gora. A lot of you are going to get the grade-that-isn’t-a-grade in his class, I’m sorry to say.

 

Our physical reality was very different from the one the First-to-think left behind. They came from a place where things don’t end. When you walk across the room, the person that was at the other end doesn’t exist anymore. You moved, and then when you move again later, the you standing where you’re standing now won’t exist anymore.

 

That’s how things are in our reality. For things to begin, something has to end. That’s not so in the reality of the Firsts. Imagine if when you moved, you remained there forever and ever. Imagine if your entire existence was an unbroken chain of copies, one motion flowing into the next. Nothing ends. Nothing ends. Nothing ends.

 

I know that might be a little hard, and maybe even a little frightening, to imagine. But imagine how frightening it was for the Firsts when they extended themselves into our reality. Imagine you entered a reality where the more you moved, the more of yourself was eaten away. That’s a little like how it was for the Firsts to come to our home. Here things were impermanent. Things changed, got old, died, and were forgotten. But with impermanence came speculation, imagination, and hope. The Firsts loved that. They embraced our reality and all that it entailed. They accepted the bad coupled with the good.

 

The First-to-think that came to our reality changed their name to the First-to-dream and shared their power over all nature, their supernal power above all physical things, their super power, if you would, with the first sapiens of our universe. It was a trade–power for a purpose, means for an end, paint to draw a dream. Together, the first sapiens and the First-to-dream planned to shape the cosmos into something neither mortal or immortal could conceive of separately. They dreamed together to recrate reality in an ineffable image.

 

But the bosses of the First, however, weren’t cool with this, not at all.

 

The Archons, sometimes called the First-to-rule (no bonus points for figuring out why they’re called that), didn’t like their little brothers playing with mortals and decided to take them home forever. Not only that, they decided to take away the supernal powers they shared with the first sapiens. The way they saw it, creatures born to die could only create death. They saw us as a disease infecting their kin. 

 

Rude, I know.

 

We couldn’t kill the Firsts, nothing can, but the Archons were worried the idea of death would make them come close to dying. They were worried that their kin would become still, would forget things, would change. And when things don’t truly change in your world, the very idea of change is very, very frightening.

 

The Archons knew they couldn’t just lock the supernal powers away back in the Astral. If they did, the First-to-dream would just drag them back to physical reality. They needed to put them somewhere that the First-to-dream couldn’t get to. Think of your parents hiding your Christmas presents in the closet, but the closet is an abstract construct from a higher reality.

 

They decided to create walls out of solidified time and impermanence on the border between our physical reality and the Astral and stick the supernal powers there, because you can do fairy tale stuff like that when you’re from a place we can only conceive of through abstractions.

 

Walls of solid time. Can you think of a how you’d get inside those? Can you even picture such a thing in you mind? It’s hard, isn’t it? And you were born and raised in the world of time and impermanence. You have some sense of time. The Firsts didn’t.

 

Time was something the First-to-dream struggled to understand. With these walls of time, these Archon walls, in front of them, they couldn’t retrieve the supernal powers or even return to physical reality, not without risking tearing apart causality as we understand it and plunging the multiverse into chaos.

 

But here’s the silver lining–the Archons understood time even less than the First-to-dream. They didn’t get that it’s not in time’s nature to hold a consistent shape forever. The nature of time is to change. You might say “duh” about that fact, but that’s because you and I are born in time. In many ways, we are time. Time is part of who we are. Time is everything that happened to you, every choice you made.

 

But time was as alien to the Archons as the sky is to a fish, and what’s more, they hated time. You can never truly understand something you hate. Ando so the fact that time can’t hold a permanent shape flew over their star-shaped heads. As time, well, marched on, the Archon walls started to warp and crack and the hyperkeimenon started to radiate throughout the multiverse seeking out intelligences similar to that of their old partners–sapient thought, in other words.

 

What do superpowers mean in an academic context?

 

You, me, and the wall all know what superpowers mean when we’re talking in the halls. Everyone knows that when you’re talking to people informally, just hanging out, that superpowers mean any ability beyond what basic humanity is capable of. Jumping to the moon is a superpower, so is being able to blow up stars with the power of your mind. But in an academic setting, words can mean something very different from what they mean in our day-to-day lives. Ms. Cryptic has probably already told you about “theory.” When people talk about “theories” outside the lab, they mean “guess,” as in “I got a theory about what happened to Tommy Taylor!”

 

Yeah, you and everyone else.

 

But inside the lab, “theory” means an explanatory model supported by experimentation. And in your mirabology classes, A superpower means a specific kind of hyperstasis.

 

What’s a hyperstasis? It’s what you call anything granted to a sapient being by the hyperkeimenon. Given that the kyperkeimenon has to radiate out of cracks in the Archon walls, the process of bestowment is flawed. Instead of getting complete control over physical reality as the First-to-dream intended, you get a limited ability. This leads to the wide variation observed in hyperstasis.

 

There are two kinds of hyperstasis. The first known kind is called a superpower, a term which comes from the supernal powers of the First-to-dream. What defines a superpower isn’t that its a power above and beyond what nature allows. A superpower doesn’t need to grant you the ability to throw planets to be a superpower. You could have a superpower that lets you turn your eyes green, that still counts as a superpower. Now outside the classroom, people may not call the ability to change your eye color a superpower, but academically speaking, it is. A superpower might not even grant you anything at all and still be a superpower. This is theoretical kind of superpower known as a silent hyperstasis, a hitherto unobserved hyperstasis theorized to exist by Dr. Stone in Princes of Dawn (you’ll be reading that before your senior year).

 

The one commonality that unites all superpowers is that they do not harm their hyperstatic. A person with fire powers can’t burn themselves with their own flames, though flames from a different source might burn them. Causing sapient being harm was the last thing the First-to-dream wanted to do, and so “do no harm” is the first law of the hyperkeimenon. Mirabological studies support this. In 1953, the Statesmen launched a study on pyrokinetics–people with fire powers. They found that of the tiny fraction that couldn’t control their flames, there was an even smaller fraction harmed by their flames. Thus the researchers concluded that the hyperkeimenon prioritized the hyperstatic’s safety, then the hyperstatic’s control over his or her power.

 

“Do no harm” is the first law of the hyperkeimenon, but because the hyperkeimenon radiates imperfectly, this law is sometimes violated. When a hyperstasis harms its hyperstatic, the hyperstasis is called a metapathogen. Sometimes its not easy to tell when a hyperstasis is a metapathogen. For cases such a pyrokinetic burning himself, its easy. But what about a hypertasis that just gives a headache sometimes? Is that a metapathogen? It’s controversial–some mirabolists argue yes, some argue no. What about a hyperstasis that gives you a headache sometimes, but also gives you incredible benefits, you can move stars with your mind and traverse the universe in moments. Is that still a metapathogen? Again, some say yes, some say no.

We’ll be discussing the controversy more in class–in fact, one of your essay assignments is going to have you argue whether a sample hyperstasis is a superpower or metapathogen.

 

How does one get superpowers?

 

Hyperstasis occurs in two forms, primary and secondary.

 

Primary hyperstasis is the natural and semi-random empowerment of intelligent life resulting from the hyperkeimenon leaking out through cracks in the Archon walls. The old thaumaturgical term for primary hyperstasis is parousia, a word which comes from the Greek and means a formal visitation. In the context of Christian mysticism, which greatly influenced the thaumaturgists, parousia refers to a visitation from God. But my personal favorite name for primary hyperstasis comes from the great mirabologist and phenomenologist Charles Fort who dubbed hyperstasis wild talents.

 

Primary hyperstasis involves two factors, a noumenal factor and a phenomenal factor. Phenomenal factors are factors that have been observed to have an influence on the likelihood of primary hyperstasis occurring. Noumenal factors are factors that we don’t and can’t (yet) observe. We’ve made a lot of progress studying superpowers since the 1860 Climacteric, but we still don’t know what all goes into causing primary hyperstasis. Not even the Form Masters and Void Spinners know. All the noumenal factors likely will never be known to us. There will always be some mystery as to why this person when dipped in a vat of acid becomes Acid Man while that person becomes a skeleton, man.

 

Don’t groan, you’re going to need to get used to teacher jokes here at Martin’s.

 

Phenomenal factors include things that take the mind from out of its every-day processing including incredibly stressful, life-or-death emergencies, thrilling discoveries, emotional peaks, and uplifting epiphanies. These events jolt the mind out of their usual thought patterns and thus shine like a beacon to the hyperkeimenon. When it was learned that “jolted minds” underwent hyperstasis in the 1920’s, it led to a dangerous trend of “power chasers” who would do reckless, stupid things to try and get superpowers. Though thankfully much rarer nowadays, you still have cases of depressed young people throwing themselves off buildings hoping that the shock will awaken powers they dreamed were always inside them. If you want to roll the dice and undergo primary hyperstasis, it’s far better to try learning new things. The thrill of discovery can trigger hyperstasis just as much as extreme fight-or-flight. Dr. Stone developed his hyperstasis when he looked at an old sea map filled with drawings of dragons and became filled with the spirit of adventure. I developed my own hyperstasis back in the 1930’s when I looked out on the lights of Joyous Harbor from up on Mt. Williams and became struck by how beautiful it all was.

 

Time is also a phenomenal factor as it causes the Archon walls to further erode and further expose the hyperkeimenon. Eventually, far, far, farrrrrr into the future we’ll reach a point where the Archon walls don’t hold back any of the hyperkeimenon. Things will get really crazy fun then.

 

Society and culture are the last phenomenal factors and we’ve known them to be phenomenal factors since the start of the 20th century when mirabolists observed that primary hyperstasis was occurring mostly in Western countries and very rarely in places like Africa and South America. This led to some to develop racist theories that only the white race could undergo hyperstasis. An early group of mirabolists called Theosophists, under Charles Leadbeater, believed that the white race, or to be more precise, an elite subsection of the white race, would achieve hyperstasis as a group and ascend as homo spiritalis. They were, of course, mistaken. It is a culture’s informational complexity that increases the likelihood of hyperstasis.

 

The more complex a civilization’s noosphere, the more likely their inhabitants’ thoughts are to brush up against the Astral and the more likely hyperstasis is to occur. When I say noosphere, note that I mean noosphere in the academic, Teilhard de Chardin sense (you will read him in your Astral cosmology class). The electronic-telepathic noosphere we make use of everyday is not the entire noosphere, it’s a synecdoche (thank me later for having you look that up before you have to take Dr. Jugend’s lit class). The proper noosphere is the culmination, but not attenuation, of our informational structure.

 

Informational complexity is the primary determinant of phenomenal factors. Keep that phrase in mind, it will be on you first test. This is because the hyperkeimenon wants to empower sapiens. It wants to empower people with thoughts like those of the first sapiens. It doesn’t want to blast superpowers all across the universe. Informational complexity is how the hyperkeimenon tells a person from a rock–however, the hyperkeimenon sometimes makes a mistake, and the rock actually will get tagged as a person.

 

The hyperkeimenon really, really wants to give people hyperstasis, but there’s only so many sapient beings in the universe. In fact, compared to the universe as a whole, sapient life is less than an atom. Sometimes, when the hyperkeimenon can’t find sapient life to give powers to, it’ll outright create sapient life through a process known as malpirgi.

 

The hyperkeimenon can, will, and has made stars, planets, entire portions of time, and yes, even rocks, sapient so that it can give them powers. That’s how the first inhabitants of our planet, the God Sculptors and Storm Choir, formed way back in the Hadean epoch. You’ll learn about them in pre-human history. They’re the reason everyone out in space calls Earth “Caosga.”

 

Because informational complexity is the primary determinant of phenomenal factors (there’s the term again!), every time you learn something new, you not only get to roll the dice to develop a new and wonderful superpower, but you increase the odds for everyone else by increasing the informational complexity of the noosphere. Isn’t that cool? I think it’s very cool. But with secondary hyperstasis, you don’t have to roll the dice at all. With secondary hyperstasis, you get exactly what you’re intended to get.

 

Secondary hyperstasis, sometimes called artificial hyperstasis, refers to the hyperstasis caused by other hyperstasis. Secondary hyperstasis comes in many different forms, but don’t worry, you’ll only need to know a few of them for the tests.

 

Transferal hyperstasis is a hyperstasis that can jump from hyperstatic to hyperstatic. Think of the lightning of the famous Marvel family. They summon it with their magic words, but it turns anyone it touches into a Marvel. Billy Batson even used this property of his hyperstasis to defeat a criminal by turning him into Captain Marvel. You’ll learn about that incident in history class with Old Rich.

 

Derived hyperstasis is any hyperstasis that is directly created by a hyperstasis. This can either refer to powers that grant powers such as the Firechief’s ability to grant others pyrokinetic powers and turn them into his “Firemen” or supertechnology created through applied hyperstasis–robot armors, Fox tuners, the noosphere, the Black Terror formula, etc.

 

Encoded hyperstasis is a secondary hyperstasis that becomes encoded on a given bit of information instead of a sapient mind. This bit of information, be it a book, computer program, sequence of DNA, or magic word, can then grant powers to people. Billy Batson is an example (The Marvel family are great hyperstasis case studies. Expect to do some reading on them this year). His special power is encoded on his magic word SHAZAM! But hyperstasis can also be encoded on objects, as is the case for the Crime King’s ring which granted its wearer all the powers of the deceased Crime Kings plus one more–you can see how there came to be several Crime Kings down through the decades.

 

Genetics can also be encoded, and this can lead to generations of similarly powered hyperstastics. The star-spanning Union of Bloodlines have a caste system based on encoded genetics, and to use a more terrestrial example, the island nation Royaume is ruled by a family of gravity manipulators. Thule would be a subterrestrial example. A historical example, and one we’ll be studying this year, would be the Aesir of the early 20th century Kokomaht Project, a race created specifically to pass down encoded genetics. They now live on the moon. Be sure to wave at them tonight!

 

Socialized hyperstasis is a hierarchical system of secondary hyperstasis. Socialized hyperstasis are kybernetic systems, which are systems of organized, hierarchical superpowers. For instance, the superhero Firechief is a living kybernetic system. He has the ability to control and project heat and energy and can grant lesser forms of this ability to those he wishes, turning them into his “Firemen.” Socialized hyperstasis is when a kybernetic system becomes large enough to involve an entire civilization.

 

In your history class, you’re going to learn that the mid 20th century gave socialized hyperstasis a bad rep. The Russians had the Dazrarazum, the Germans the Vril Volkfeld, and they all attempted to create a system where predictable sets of superpowers could be given and rescinded to the population as needed while disruptive primary hyperstatics were identified and contained. The Volkfeld, for instance, permeated German controlled territories with an energy known as Vril. This energy was controlled by Vril adepts who granted varying degrees of control over Vril to different people. The more the Nazi party liked you, the more control over Vril you were allowed.  Primary hyperstatics, which the Nazis regarded as living chaos, were identified, isolated, and often exterminated by the Volkfeld. If your powers couldn’t be taken away by the state, you didn’t get to live.

 

Socialized hyperstasis held a lot of baggage post-war, and when Earth State was founded in the 1960’s they worked very hard to distance their socialized hyperstasis, the Ecumenical, from historic examples. But note the Lightning Mind network of the Vajra, a race created by the Kokomaht Project, is a socialized hyperstasis that predated and outlasted the Volkfeld. The Lightning Mind was created by the telepathic Vajra as an opt-in community that existed beyond borders, be they political or geographic. People were free to enter the Lightning Mind or leave it. This was why it succeeded while the larger Volkfeld failed. It is not that socialized hyperstasis was evil in and of itself, it is the mandatory enforcement of it that is evil.

 

…But enough talk about Earth State’s policies…

 

Epistrophic hyperstasis, also known as thaumaturgical hyperstasis, is a very special kind of primary hyperstasis. Undergoing epistrophic hyperstasis is the a major step in several thaumaturgical systems. To reach the power of beings like Athanor, Baltim, and Shazam, one can’t just wait for primary hyperstasis to come to them, one has to go to the Archon walls and submerge themselves in their emanations.

 

Epistrophe comes from the Greek and means a return. In a mirabology context, it means a return to the Astral. It’s opposite is emanation, which means something that goes from the Astral to physical reality. When Donald Swift summons his thought-forms from out of the Bessant Layer of the Astral, they emanate to his side. When the members of Mr. Neiros’ Night Club journey into the Dream Layer of the Astral, they take an epistrophe.

 

The hyperkeimenon is located within the Archon walls. The walls are bordered on one side by the near Astral, the part of the Astral readily reached by human thoughts, and on the other by the far Astral. To get close to the hyperkeimenon and maximize one’s chances at undergoing primary hyperstasis, one has to travel deep into the Astral. This is challenging, not to mention dangerous. The Archon walls are something the Archons made without fully understanding what it was they were constructing. It’s very dangerous to get close to them. The danger doesn’t come from the walls themselves but from how they twist cause, effect, and time. Many have been led astray in their Astral travels by the Archon walls, doom to wander the multiverse indefinitely as a temporally displaced shade. The safest way to get close to the hyperkeimenon is to harmonize one’s Astral body with an Astral chord.

 

Whenever a mind travels through the Astral, it leaves behind a mental pathway called an Astral chord. Distance become irrelevant when one is deep enough in the Astral. Paths are not followed one step after the other. Paths are matched, present voyager matching the chord of the trailblazer.

 

When thaumaturgist Samuel Mathers made telepathic contact with the superbeing Baltim, known to Mathers as Abramelin, he learned Abramelin’s chord and traveled far into the Astral where he not only underwent primary hyperstasis but became the tipping point for the Archon walls around our universe. They buckled like never before, leading to an era of unprecedented Astral contact and hyperstastic development.

 

Emanated Hyperstasis is a special kind of secondary hyperstasis that occurs when Astral beings empower humans. Astral powers are supernal powers. They may not be exactly the supernal powers of the Firsts, but they are still supernal powers, and so still count. The most famous example would be Billy Batson, who is empowered by the immortals Solomon, Hercules, Achilles, Zeus, Atlas, and Mercury.

 

Note that Astral beings can also undergo hyperstasis, and when they do it is called primary . Many Astral beings are just as sapient as mankind. The hyperkeimenon recognizes them as beings to empower just as much as mankind. For some beings, hyperstasis is nothing more than a drop in the bucket. What is power, even infinite power, to a being like Zeus? To others, hyperstasis is a considerable boost to their powers. Several mighty members of the dueling courts of Fairy owe their power and position to the supernal powers of the Firsts.

 

A specific kind of secondary emanated hyperstasis is known as a hyperstatic union. This occurs when an Astral being, be it a thought-form from the unconscious Astral or a homo fabula from the conscious Astral, binds to a person.

 

Thought-forms have evolved within the Bessant Layer of the unconscious Astral to symbiotically, or in some cases parasitically, attach themselves to humans to feed off their emotions. Dr. Bell and her thought-form Mad Mary provide an example of the parasitic case. Homo fabula sometimes join with humans as the human perspective helps ground their personalities against syncretic flow, the natural tendency for homo fabula to merge and diverge with similar homo fabula. Syncretic flow, for instance, temporarily caused the Greek God Hades to assume a sinister, malevolent personality in 1997. This shift in personality led to a war between afterlives across the conscious Astral until Hades’ personality was restored in 1998.

 

When the god Thor merged himself with Grant Farrel in 1940, he did so to make sure the Thor that fought on the side of the Allies wouldn’t suddenly shift into a Thor sympathetic to Nazi ideology. Objects of power are also often trusted to the care of humans. Pandora’s box is much, much, muchhhhhh safer in human hands than divine ones. The Olympians don’t want the box to suddenly turn into a version that actively tempts its user into opening it or a version that leaks, so they’ve entrusted it to the Intercessors for safe keeping. If they can’t keep it safe, we might as well open it now.

 

What are the components of hyperstasis?

 

It’s sometimes hard for students to understand why we break hyperstasis down into parts. In our day-to-day lives, we usually think of superpowers as “one thing” or “one set.” “My superpower is that I can blank. My powerset lets me do X, Y, and Z. My powers allow me to blank.”

 

I’ve heard it time and time again. “Nightwatcher, why do we learn about hyle and ousia when no one talks about them?”

 

The reason we break down hyperstasis into detailed components is so we can fully understand hyperstasis. If you want to learn how a watch works, you take it apart. If you want to learn how  a body works, you dissect it. So without further ado, lets put on the gloves and get to the frog.

 

Every hyperstasis has a physical component known as a hyle and a mental component known as an ousia.

 

The word hyle comes from Aristotle who used the term to refer to matter. Have you ever talked to an angel? They speak Enochian, and the Enochian word for people, as in people from physical reality, is 

 

In mirabology, hyle refers to any physical, tangible part of a hyperstasis. Take my superpower for instance. My harings are my hyle. Dr. Jugend’s extradimensional windows are his hyle. Ms.Cryptic’s giant huggable body is her hyle as are the telekinetic lights she creates.

 

The term hylomorph comes from hyle plus morph, or “form,” and as you might suspect, means a hyle with a physical, tangible form. Telekinesis is a hyle, but it isn’t a hylomorph. Telepathy is the same. Any effect, force, or alteration is a hyle but not a hylomorph. Hylomorphs include some secondary hyperstasis like encoded genetics and robot armor.

 

My own harings are hylomorphs but more specifically hylozoomorphs, which are hyles that demonstrate intelligence.

 

Whatever you do, don’t call hyle “the ability to…” as in “Nightwatcher’s hyle is the ability to summon harings.” That’s incorrect and a common mistake. I’ve counted off on so many tests because of it. The ability to do something is an ousia.

 

The word ousia comes from Aristotle who used it to refer to the essence of a thing beyond its physical form. Ousia is the ability to use a superpower. My ability to communicate with my harings, to tell them to do this or do that or knock it off, is my ousia. 

 

Ousia is a hyperstatic’s ability to intuitively understand and sense their superpower, mentally control their superpower, and be unharmed by their superpower. With my superpower, I can sense where my harings are. I know where they are instinctively like how you instinctively know where your limbs are and can coordinate them (this is called proprioception, by the way, in case you were wondering). Now, I can’t actually command my harings because my power isn’t that I create them or puppet them around, it’s that I summon and communicate with them. Even if I could control my harings, I wouldn’t. They’re my buddies, and for the most part they listen to me (though they do like to steal my hat and wallet). But other superhumans can command their hyle, and it’s a good thing they can. If Dr. Jugend couldn’t control his windows, the school would end up looking like swiss cheese-meets-stained glass, and that wouldn’t do at all, though it would probably look pretty cool. And I probably don’t need to tell you what trouble telepaths get into when they can’t control their powers. TIMS has a huge budget for a very good reason.

 

With a metapathogen, the ousia is faulty, which results in serious problems. A faulty ousia means that a superhuman with for instance, fire powers, is harmed by their own flames, can’t sense where their flames are, and can’t control their flames. That can create quite a problem indeed. But through theoria, a person with a metapathogen can gradually improve their ousia. Several of your classmates serve as great examples of how theoria can turn a curse into a gift.

 

Theoria is the ability to use superpowers with intent and skill. Theoria is what you develop in your applied hyperstasis classes and ERC. Theoria is a combination of experience, confidence, and disciplined thinking. With enough theoria, you can even change how your hyperstasis works. That is exactly what Tanya Abelman, our Flight Club captain recently honored with her picture on the front of the latest edition of Power and Responsibility, did. Her metapathogen made her wake up every morning with a new and uncontrollable power based on her nightmares, but after training with Mr. Neiros, she learned how to always dream of flying no matter what nightmare she had, so that no matter what, she would always wake up with a power that was familiar to her. This allowed her to build up her theoria to the point that, though she can’t fully control her nightmares, she can mitigate the random powers they give her via her flight power.

 

If you want a good mental image of how all these components fit together, think of Captain Marvel. The famous team of Captain Marvel and Billy Batson demonstrates several components of hyperstasis.

 

Billy Batson is a hyperstatic. His hyperstasis is being able to summon an extradimensional bolt of lightning by shouting SHAZAM! This bolt of lightning (actually thrown by Zeus every time he shouts SHAZAM! if you can believe it) is a hylomorph, and when it touches Billy, he switches places with a big red hylozoomorph named Captain Marvel, a man that absolutely cannot be physically harmed. Billy’s ousia is being aware of Captain Marvel’s actions and thoughts while he’s extradimensionally displaced (Billy describes it as being a disembodied head off Captain Marvel’s shoulder) and being able to communicate with Captain Marvel during this displacement. Billy’s theoria is his incredible teamwork with Captain Marvel, which makes the duo the world’s mightiest team and dare I suggest the world’s finest team.

 

What is the purpose of superpowers?

 

I refer you to the Martin’s School creed:

 

To protect ourselves and others.

 

To bring to light meaning and purpose for ourselves and others.

 

To advance beyond who we were yesterday.

 

To exert the true will of our hearts upon nature and find that we are worthy of doing so.

 

Learn it, live it.