Types of Hyperstasis and Their Components

Parousia

Also known as primary hyperstasis, parousia is the natural and semi-random distribution of hyperstasis throughout the cosmos and consists of a phenomenal factor and a noumenal factor.

The experience of parousia is highly subjective. Some do not even notice the experience and only discover that they have a superpower after the fact. Some experience entire narratives similar to dreams or religious experiences where beings like gods or angels appear before them and grant them power. Followers of the Black Way believe these beings to be psychological embodiments of an individual’s True Will.

Others experience parousia as an overwhelming emotion that quickly comes and passes as if they were moved by listening to a silent symphony. Still others are taken into the Astral through epistrophe and find themselves with strange powers on a strange world, though epistrophe is a rare effect of hyperstasis.

The term parousia is Greek and means a formal visitation. In Christian mysticism, which greatly influenced the thaumaturgical tradition that first studied superpowers, it refers to an earthly visitation by an angel or Christ.

Epistrophe

A brief, spontaneous journey into the Astral caused by the warping of the Time Walls. It’s opposite, to journey from the Astral to our cosmos, is called emmanation.

In the late 19th century, epistrophe was used interchangeably with hyperstasis (then called hypostasis) as it was thought that hyperstasis entailed some sort of journey into the Astral even if unrecalled by the hyperstatic. But later observations in the 1920’s proved that it was possible for beings to be taken into the Astral without undergoing any sort of hyperstasis.

It has been hypothesized that many episodes of legend from the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of Heaven to Thomas the Rymer’s journey into Fairy may stem from epistrophe, but experts advise caution on making such judgements and cite Dr. Stone’s famous objection written in Princes of Dawn.

Epistrophe comes from the Greek and means a repetition or return, as in a return to the hyperstatic state the Firsts intended for man.

Phenomenal Factor

Observable factors of a parousia such as personal characteristics and the surrounding environment.

As soon as the superhuman population grew large enough to have observable trends, mirabologists went to work studying those trends. It was found that parousia tended to happen more often to:

--People in large populations, especially cities.

--People in educated populations.

--People that regularly take part in intense intellectual activity such as explorers, autodidacts, thought-sculptors, and artists.

--People in moments of epiphany such as Dr. Chime who upon solving an equation that demonstrated that the Gridley wave receiver could be improved upon heard the music of the spheres and became attuned to its frequency forevermore.

--People in moments of extreme emotion such as the Curator who felt inspired meditating over the exhibits of an art museum which he had curated for years and found that he could reach out and touch the painted worlds that hung between frames.

--People in moments of life-threatening danger such as American Crusader who was bathed in deadly darklight radiation only for it to glance off his skin as harmless as raindrops and warp in his grasp like clay.

--People in altered states of consciousness such as the Oneironaut, a dreamwalker who bravely followed a catatonic child whelmed up in a nightmare. The nightmare tore his soul apart, but his will was such that he reassembled himself stronger than before. The experience made him a king among dreamwalkers who could make reality into dreams and dreams into reality.

Phenomenal factors all involve the noosphere. The hyperkeimenon remembers the noosphere. Though the races that constitute the noosphere have evolved, the noosphere remains the same in our time as it was in the blue time. Complex, novel thoughts at both the societal and individual level cause the noosphere to grow and ripple increasing its contact area with the hyperkeimenon and thus increasing the likelihood of hyperstasis.

Noumenal Factor

Unobservable factors of a parousia.

No race in the cosmos, from young humanity to the ageless Form Masters, fully understands how parousia works. There is always an indescribable element at play that determines why this person develops this superpower and why that person develops that superpower.

Why does one man set on fire survive and gain the ability to control the flames while another burns? Why does one man awaken with his dream while another awakens from his dream?

No one knows.

Possibly, no one will ever know.

Secondary hyperstasis seeks to eliminate the noumenal element as much as possible so as to make hyperstasis predictable, controllable, and replicable.

Secondary Hyperstasis

Also known as artificial hyperstasis or technological hyperstasis, secondary hyperstasis refers to hyperstasis derived from parousia.

Parousia, due to noumenal factors, is highly random. But the hyperstasis it creates can in some cases be reapplied non-randomly with little or no noumenal factors. For instance, once parousia creates a telepath, that telepath can create trails through the Astral called cords due to how they harmoniously resonate across both the Astral and our cosmos.

Chords can be followed into and out of the Astral, and when they are, an echo of the original telepath’s hyperstasis occurs. It is by meditating on these chords that adherents of thaumaturgical tradition achieve hyperstasis.

But secondary hyperstasis comes in many more forms. Some superpowers are able to be “shared” with others like the white flame of Fire Chief that he distributes to his Fire Men. Because hyperstasis is information-responsive, it can also be “encoded” on a variety of mediums to produce echoes just as chords do.

The complexity of genetics makes it an ideal medium and two intergalactic cultures, the Blood Clan and the Chromians, make extensive use of it through their superpowered castes. Technology can also be a medium. Artificials are sometimes built with uniform powers to perform shared operations like the void runners who were designed by their caring creators to nest on dead worlds to avoid confrontation and competition with all other species and to furtively fly into the void if they sense an alien presence. Even thought itself can be a medium. Entire species of thought-forms inhabiting the Astral have evolved to grant hyperstasis to those they would form symbiotic or parasitic relationships with. If a host has no way to mentally interact with the Astral, then it has no way to provide a thought-form with the emotional matter upon which it feeds.

Hypostasis

Commonly confused for hyperstasis, hypostasis has two meanings.

The first meaning is as a dated term for hyperstasis. During the late 19th century, hypostasis was what hyperstasis was called. This was because the hyperkeimenon was thought to be the hypokeimenon--the underlying substructure of our universe. When it was determined in the 1920’s that the source of superpowers was outside rather than inside the universe the hypokeimenon became the hyperkeimenon and hypostasis hyperstasis.

In modern times, hypostasis describes a kind of hyperstasis resulting from or resulting in the merger of a human with an Astral being. This is because the meaning of hypostasis in the context of Christianity is the union of the human and divine in Christ. Examples of hypostasis include daimon telepaths who bond to naturally occuring thought-forms that nourishment from their emotions as flowers do the sun, Abramelin operators who establish a rapport with their own ghost, and fusions of homo fabula and man like the Thor of the 1940’s who was a man named Grant Farrel who allowed the homo fabula Thor to enter into and change his soul like a bird nesting in a tree.

Superpowers and Metapathogens

Superpower

Colloquially, any sort of hyperstasis with a demonstrable and significant ability.

Academically, a hyperstasis unable to cause harm to the hyperstatic.

It is a common misconception that to be called a superpower a hyperstasis must bestow a significant physical ability and be a “power above power.” But being benign to its hyperstatic is the only requirement of a superpower. As such, even our commonly used tangible noosphere is considered a superpower under strict academic terms though the average person doesn’t think of it as anymore of a superpower than electric appliances or the interway.

The academic definition of superpower aggravates the raging debate over superpower legislation in the World State. Academically, there is no separation between a freely used superpower like the the tangible noosphere and one tightly controlled like telepathy. Under the academic definition of superpowers, all distinctions between “safe” and “unsafe” superpowers are arbitrary and subject to culture.

For example, the Thule of the sub-mantle Nepots Ocean undergo a genetically encoded secondary hyperstasis as part of their maturation in which they bond with a thought-form that allows them to project their characteristic telekinetic fields which they call their “eyes.” These eyes are how the Thule survive the crushing pressures of their environment. For the Thule, their superpowers are as natural as breathing. But the World State legislates similar powers as “unnatural dangers.”

Even among humans it is culture that creates distinctions between superpowers. In the World State, most superpowers are regulated. In Japan, very few. In the United States, almost none.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the common term for superpowers was “supernal powers,” as in a power from the supernal cosmos, another name for the Astral consciousness. But as knowledge about hyperstasis left the laboratories and entered the public sphere, “supernal powers” changed into the more catchy “superpowers.”

“Superpowers” has remained the common term to this day despite the development of alternatives such as “metapowers,” “quirks,” and “hyperabilities.” There just seems to be something innately appealing about the word “superpowers”

Metapathogen

A hyperstasis that is directly harmful to its hyperstatic, also known as incomplete hyperstasis.

In a superpower, the ousia prevents the hyle from directly harming the hyperstatic. But in a metapathogen, the ousia is faulty. It was never the intention of the Firsts for metapathogens to exist. Their existence is due to the Time Walls that entrap the hyperkeimenon and break it apart as it emanates leading to imperfections. These imperfections cause the wide diversity observed in superpowers as well as metapathogens.

As the Time Walls continue to warp, it is hoped that one day metapathogens will be eliminated from our cosmos entirely. But until that time, man will have to deal with metapathogens from spontaneous combustion to parasitic thought-forms.

It is a common misconception that a superpower difficult for its hyperstatic to control is a metapathogen. But the most dangerous and unstable superpower is still a superpower so long as it’s ousia protects its hyperstatic. Hard to control superpowers are said to be low in theoria. They are not said to be metapathogens.