Princes of Dawn

One of the earliest works on the subject of superhuman anthropology by Dr. Hercules Stone. It continues to be taught in classrooms to this day.

By 1933, the world’s superhuman population had grown to the point that it could be studied like any large group of humans. The world had questions that anthropology could answer. Did superhumans from different cultures act differently? Did their powers alienate them from human society? Did a superhuman born with his or her power behave differently from one that developed his or her power later in life? And what was the world to make of the increasingly common masked mystery-man phenomena?

Princes of Dawn, named after the winged and horned skeleton unearthed at a cave in Ariège, France taken to be the oldest superhuman and named the Prince of Dawn, was written to answer those questions.

Princes of Dawn is an enormous, comprehensive tome, but the driving point throughout the book is that super powers were not corruptive as many feared. Rather, super powers created a positive psychological change through what Dr. Stone termed “the challenge of duty.”

A nascent hyperstatic experiences polarized emotions. The raw potential of his powers make him feel elated. He can do the impossible. He can bring his dreams to life. In situations where basics would fear social reprisal or the natural elements, he does not. He laughs at the mob and the thunder. Dr. Stone called this the Adam state, as Adam existed free of society and at peace with nature.

But the Adam state is met by another state that is as limiting as the Adam state is liberating. The hyperstatic is crushed by feelings of responsibility. He may even feel guilty being given a power over those they believe more worthy. Before his hyperstasis, he chose his way in life. But afterwards, his power decided. Dr. Stone called this the Christ state, as Christ was burdened by the duty of his divinity. He asked for the cup to be taken from him, though it would not be.

A nascent hyperstatic is torn between the Adam state and the Christ state. That tension is the challenge of duty, and rising to it by striking a balance between the two states resulted in a stronger and more virtuous man in touch with what Stone called his true will--though the term was borrowed from Crowley.

Most of Princes of Dawn is spent exploring the many ways superhumans solved the challenge of duty from “benevolent shadows” that help the world with their powers in secret and silence to “mystery men” that lived two lives--one as a basic and one as a colorful character whose entire being was a sublimation of their feelings of obligation toward society. As such, Princes of Dawn is technically a work of anthropology, not mirabology. But several ideas in the book have influenced mirabology such as Stone’s power and Stone’s Law. Dr. Hercules Stone never formally studied mirabology, but due to Princes of Dawn he was awarded an honorary degree by William Quan Judge college.

Stone’s Law

There is a super power that breaks any preconceived notions, defeats any force, eludes any observation, defies any classification, and overcomes any limitation.

Put simply, “There is such a power.”

Since it was coined in the 1933 book Princes of Dawn, Stone’s Law has been applied in different contexts throughout the decades. In the 1930’s, it was used against several ideas coming from Europe. Germany and its allies wanted their citizens to believe that anti-super power technology was on the cusp of development. They wanted them to believe in ray weaponry and force fields that would strip away the powers of any superhuman they touched. They also wanted their citizens to believe that their “socialized powers”--secondary hyperstasis like the Vril Volkfeld and the Russian Dazrazem--would solve the “super power question.” Natural, parousia derived superpowers would be identified and neutralized within the Volkfeld and Dazraze while distributing their own superpowers to people on a temporary basis according to their needs. Stone’s Law predicted failure in the Axis’ search for a silver bullet against superpowers--and failure is exactly what history shows.

In the post-war era, Stone’s Law was used against the academic scramble for a “unified theory” of superpower taxonomy. The Worlds War brought an explosion in the variety of superpowers and scientists around the world put time and energy behind creating increasingly convoluted lists of superpowers in the hopes of becoming the “Linnaeus of superhumanity.” But, just as Stone’s Law predicted, super powers defied any classification, and to this day there are many prospective classification systems, particularly in Japan, but none that stand out from the crowd in usefulness.

Because of its use in the “unified theory” debate, Stone’s Law is often paraphrased as “powers are described, not classified,” but this is actually a quote by mirabologist Frank Mitchell.

“There is no limit to what super powers can do. The Firsts knew this when they combined our imagination with their mastery. They wanted to transcend all they knew. They wanted to go beyond being creations of the Eye of Light and become creators. Whenever someone speaks of a final theory of superpowers, they are a fool. Those in Europe that say their technology can control super powers and force them to be more equitable are doubly fools. Whatever limit mankind imposes upon super powers, super powers will surmount. If you must ask “can there be a superpower that can do this?” know that the answer will always be “there is such a power.””

--Dr. Hercules Stone, Princes of Dawn

Stone’s Power

A thought experiment written by mirabolist Dr. Hercules Stone in his seminal 1933 work on superhuman anthropology Princes of Dawn. Stone’s power is a superpower whose hyle is that it doesn’t appear as a superpower--in other words, a superpower whose power is that it isn’t a superpower.

Stone’s power is sometimes confused for “silent powers”--superpowers with an ousia but a suppressed or absent hyle. Silent powers have the capacity to express a power but are without a power. However, this was not what Dr. Stone meant by his theoretical power. According to his famous law, superpowers have no limit. But did this mean that a superpower could have not being a superpower as a power? There lied the conundrum.

Such a superpower would be impossible to observe let alone examine, but Dr. Stone nonetheless believed that such a power not only could exist but must exist. 

Dr. Stone believed that The Firsts intended for superpowers to be contradictions and that his theoretical power was the fullest expression of this intention. 

The ultimate superpower was to not be a superpower.

This brought ridicule on Dr. Stone. Though still tremendously respected for his work in the field of superhuman anthropology (Princes of Dawn remains taught in classrooms to this day) many of his colleagues took his theoretical power as just one more of his infamous eccentricities (he was known to sleep in a sarcophagus). And yet, when examined through the lens of cosmic history his theoretical power seems a lot less ridiculous. Metaphysics, afterall, often manifests in ridiculous ways--as an eye at the Summit of all Things or a heart at the Bottom of Eternity.

During the Blue Time at the dawn of our universe, the Firsts shared their power with the Elder Mortals of our universe in exchange for the experience of mortality and the desires and dreams it brought. This created superpowers. The Firsts intended for superpowers to be a union of immortal power and mortal imagination, the eternal with the ephemeral. Superpowers were to be something that mortals couldn’t dream of and immortals couldn’t create.

Dr. Stone believed his theoretical “power-that-was-not-a-power” was that something.

Dr. Stone took our inability to observe let alone examine his theoretical power as showing that mankind has a long way to go in understanding superpowers--and their purpose.

Stone’s Objection

An objection Dr. Hercules Stone made in Princes of Dawn pertaining to what he saw as the tendency for anthropologists to treat mythology as nothing more than the garbled accounts of superhumans and epistrophes.

Mythology to Dr. Stone had a value as mythology, as fiction, and to reduce mythology to primitive reporting disguised it's worth as fiction. He, like his contemporary Carl Jung with whom he would later collaborate with to write Prophets and Heroes which more completely articulated his objection expressed in Princes of Dawn, believed that mythology was a collection of socio-cultural metaphors through which man understood himself and his world. Mythology was how man expressed political, social, and psychological ideas before those disciplines were codified. And in our age where those ideas are codified, mythology still has value in taking rational ideas and elevating them through powerful emotional narratives.

Stone argued that in a world without superhumans and extradimensional visitations mythology would have still had formed. Perhaps Hercules was a superhuman in ancient Greece. Or perhaps Hercules was a superhuman Dorian with a degree of superstrength whose exploits were exaggerated over time to mythical proportions. Maybe the story of Hercules was formed before the superhuman and applied to him after the fact. But the story of Hercules, however it came about, was a story. It was a story of regret and redemption and stands as valuable regardless of the reality.