Text page
The Emergence of Hyperstition
A later essay that reconstructs hyperstition through CCRU lore, Lemurian time, and the problem of fiction becoming real.
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Core idea
Shambaugh treats hyperstition as a practice of manifestation in which fiction, religion, hoax, and engineered reality can no longer be cleanly separated. The concept is unfolded through narrative rather than only definition.
The essay moves by embedding explanation inside stories of Lemuria, Stillwell, Krakatoa, and transmission from deep time. It demonstrates hyperstition by letting archive myth and conceptual argument recurse into each other.
That matters because it shows how hyperstition survives most vividly when it is narrated rather than merely paraphrased. The text keeps the concept tied to time war, haunting, and invented tradition instead of reducing it to a slogan about self-fulfilling prophecy.
How to read this text
Read the opening definition carefully, then stay with the Lemurian narrative instead of skipping ahead to summary points. The story is part of the argument.
Track how the essay keeps moving between explanation and transmission. The payoff lies in seeing definition and mythology become inseparable.
Representative extracts
Definition · paragraph 1
203 13 The Emergence of Hyperstition Chris Shambaugh (and Maudlin Cortex)1 According to the tenets of Hyperstition, there is no diference in principle between a universe, a religion, and a hoax. All in- volve an engineering of manifestation, or practical iction, that is ultimately unworthy of belief.
Stakes · paragraph 27
As someone who had committed her life to the most urgent invariances, Dr. Echidna Stillwell was well aware that superstition only ever scratched the surface of reality. This notion of hyperstition, however, had strong Lemurian current, and got its grip on her.
History · paragraph 17
The Emergence of Hyperstition 209 or body, but was rather a key embedded in the numeric undercurrents of mat- ter itself. ((:)): Stillwell’s faith in the unremitting diagrammatic exactness of the Numo- gram led her to think that it had the capacity to arise from any alphanumer- ic culture in history.
Style · paragraph 29
The Emergence of Hyperstition 213 ‘Hyperstition strikes me as a most intriguing coinage. We thought we were mak- ing it up, but all the time the Nma were telling us what to write—and through them’.
Style · paragraph 29
We thought we were mak- ing it up, but all the time the Nma were telling us what to write—and through them’. As with the Numogram, it would seem that hyperstition was not some- thing that could be attributed to Vysparov, or anybody else for that matter. (:::) Stillwell presumed the preix of this word was derived from ‘hypodermic’ (beneath the skin), but also approached this assumption cautiously— wonder- ing whether this concept’s potency wasn’t also connected to hype (recent Amer- ican slang for trick or swindle).
Appears in sections
Hyperstition and Fiction-Making Primary section
The archive's central model of fiction as causal force, feedback loop, and world-making process.