Akashic Records

The Akashic Records are, in some New Age circles, held to be a mystical, otherworldly compendium of all knowledge. This is reflected in the etymology: the word 'akashic' derives from the Sanskrit akasha, meaning "sky" or "space". Some even call it the "mind of God." Fiction, of course, uses 'Akashic Record' as a cool phrase. It's been used in mysticism since the 19th century, being part of the Theosophical Society doctrines.

If a God of Knowledge exists in the same setting, the two will almost invariably have some form of connection. See Great Big Book of Everything, Great Big Library of Everything, Magical Database, and Omniscient Database for a more modern interpretation of the idea. Also refer to this entire website.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Aka Akatoretachi no Monogatari, Shirley becomes a vessel for universal knowledge thanks to Taiga's experiments.
• The character Kanade from Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense. has a unique Magic Staff (albeit lacking the "staff" image) that's outright named Akashic Records, which represents his desire to learn knowledge alongside his Photographic Memory. It's special ability involves granting 9 random skills from the 3 skill types per day, representing drawing from the root of all knowledge to enhance his "skills".
• At least two characters in The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer either seek or have access to them.
• Shows up in Vampire Hunter D. Those who can read them know the future. Those who can write or rewrite them can change reality. Surprisingly, D can flat out No-Sell them and rewrite them
• In .hack //Link, the story revolves around the struggle to control the Akashic records of "The World", the MMORPG inside the fiction. The manga features rewriting several previous series' character's memories so that they act as their stories began, not as they ended. The game has the character somehow travelling through time by accessing the oversoul memory of everyone connected to The World. Or...something.
• Future Diary actually uses them in the same way as the myth near the end of the story. In this case, the god is Deus ex Machina deleting Akise's existence into the Records now that he has served his purpose. Akise vows not to let the gods decide his future though.
• Referenced frequently in Goodnight Punpun by Pegasus, and evidently the source of his supposed precognition.
• In The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Yata's alien hand puppet uses the Akashic Records in order to commune with the spirit of a dead goldfish. Yeah.
• Referenced heavily in the Nasuverse through various means, typically as 'Akasha', 'The Origin', 'Radix' or 'The Root'. Implied to be what most (if not all) mages work towards in their studies, either consciously or not. Those who succeed become Sorcerers, capable of magic that is otherwise utterly impossible, such as Time Travel and accessing alternate realities (only five mages in all of history have accomplished this). The Grail in Fate/stay night can be used to open a gate to Akasha by sacrificing all seven Servants. Also, one of the main characters is an avatar of sorts for the Record (Ryougi Shiki from The Garden of Sinners). Later entries eventually reveal there are beings who aren't connected to Akasha from "another reality", but they're not the sort of things a normal person would want to be getting knowledge from.
  • In Fate/EXTRA, the purpose of the Moon Cell is to observe and record the entirety of human history.
• Angel Sanctuary: Also known as "Heaven's Tablet". Allegedly, these contain the power that God used and the holder will have control over the universe. The actual records are a supercomputer located outside time and space. And God is its AI.
• In Outlaw Star the Galactic Leyline is the Akashic Record, among other things.
• In one Psycho Busters story arc the heroes are told they needed to access these in order to reset the world to how it was before it began to fall apart.
• Sensor: these are essentially the macguffin of the story—Kyoko Byakuya becomes a vessel for all the universe's knowledge, granting her near-total universal awareness, (with significant drawbacks, such as being intimately aware of planets and other heavenly bodies being destroyed by natural forces far off in the cosmos) and main antagonist Kagero Aido wants to capture her so that he can access them himself. The Akashic Records—or part of them, at least—appear in a separate form as a cloud-like black mass with a resemblance to brain matter.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yubel uses a spell called Akashic Record. It allows the user to draw two new cards, which is always a worthwhile gain. However, the concept of going beyond the known to include the unknown means that if either drawn card has been used at any point in the duel, they're both removed from play.
  • The Numeron Code in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL. Recording all of reality and being able to change it, along with being the card all things originate from. Both Astral World and the Seven Barian Emperors seek the card. Surprisingly enough Don Thousand does not seek the Numeron Code and reveals this to Vector after they kickstart the Assimilation Plot. As long as Astral World is destroyed Don Thousand does not care for obtaining it.
• A funny reference in episode 22 of Space☆Dandy where a music shop is named "Akashiku Records" (with "records" in the sense of vinyl discs).
• Zombie Loan has an organization called the "Akashic Record Reform Committee" who seem to want to get their hands on and change the records for some purpose.

Comic Books

• Archer & Armstrong: Several of the conspiracies and Archer have the ability to tap into the Akashic Record, thus instantly gaining whatever ability is required at the moment. At the start of the series, Archer was "only" able to use it to become immediately proficient in whatever martial art or trained ability was needed at the time, but after an encounter with the HARD Corps, has begun making use of their psionic abilities.
• The Book of Oa and the GL Archives from the Green Lantern comics store all the universal knowledge. In The Killers of Krypton, Supergirl is outright told that "If it is not in the archive, it likely didn't happen."
• In Lucifer, the artificer Scoria's pool where the thoughts of God flow and can be seen counts. Also the Aleph.

Fan Works

• Fate of the Clans: The Root, AKA Akasha, is where information on events from the past, present, and future are stored. It's also the place souls come from and ultimately return to. This is how Anna was able to reunite with Mikoto after she sacrificed herself to destroy the Greater Grail.
• Fuck The Jesus Beam: Used by Lordguckles to figure out how BaROCK O.B.A.M.A. was released, and as a Deus ex Machina to power up.
• In The Nuptialverse, the Keeper's duty is to record every detail of the lives of every living being, ever.
• In Reflections Lost on a Dark Road, It turns out that this is the Anti-Life Equation's true nature.
• Distortions (Symphogear) has the Sefer Hachaim, known as The Book of Life in Biblical mythology, a recording/monitoring device left by the Custodians. Emily said that the Horsemen used its record to show her Miku killing her father, but Samantha tells Hibiki that Emily was never approached by any member of the Horsemen and Caprice tells Maria that it was destroyed with the Curse of Babal. Elfnein realizes after an encounter with the Pale Man that he at the very least has a record of it.

Literature

• In the New Age science fiction novel 2150 AD by Thea Alexander (1971), in 2150 AD society is ordered according to a philosophy called the Macro-Philosophy and they have supercomputers with video screens that can access the akashic records.
• Right in the title of Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor. The Akashic Records are the main goal of multiple groups, who are prepared to do anything to acquire them.
• In Mercedes Lackey's Burning Water, psychic expert Diana Tregarde uses her associate, who is by nature a medium, to access the akashic record to get information about the ancient history behind the threat they're facing.
• In Horus Heresy novel Mechanicum, a major subplot features Forge Master Zeth attempting to construct a machine to read the Warp. In an inversion of what Warp reading is usually done for (predicting the future), she was trying to create an "Akashic Reader", channeled by hundreds of psykers, to gain back all scientific knowledge humanity lost over a galactic Dark Age. Unfortunately, it never got off the ground, and in fact was seriously set back when she didn't reveal the full system plans of how it would work to her chief assistant.^note The assistant crew was brought in to help with the last and most sophisticated component, but the "power supply" was much stronger than they knew what to calculate for. The backlash killed all of the psykers and nearly destroyed the entire machine. Before Zeth could resume her project, the Horus Heresy came to Mars, which was swiftly embroiled in its own civil war, in which Zeth, and the plans for the system, was killed, and the Akashic Reader was destroyed utterly. Can't have nice things happening in the 40K universe, after all...
• In The Immortals Series, there's an akashic library in Summerland that Ever uses to find out what's wrong with Damen in the second book.
• Jorge Luis Borges' The Library of Babel takes this idea to its most literal extreme. The library contains every possible arrangement of letters, spaces, and punctuation that will fit in a 410-page book. Unfortunately, too much information is just as bad as no information at all - the inhabitants of the library have no way to index the books. In theory, a true index is hiding in one of the books, but so are millions of false indexes.
• Akashic records are accessed several times when people astral travel in K.K. Savage's Nation of the Third Eye. In this science fiction novel, the Hall of Records is a place in the astral world where people can access past-life experiences.
• In Quantum Gravity, the Akashic record is mentioned in the last book. The artifacts that the cyborgs were made from, and therefore by extension Lila herself, are physical expressions of it.
• In Ra, the Akashic Records are a high-fidelity recording of the history of magic and the world, created during the reconstruction of Earth after Abstract War .
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Volume 10 explains the existence of the "Grand Records", the magical equivalent of quantum information that underpins reality itself, left behind by its long-dead god (the Library of the Depths, the labyrinth's fourth layer, is the barest glimpse of these Records). This information is usually inaccessible unless one can sufficiently suppress one's sense of self, which normally prevents one from actually making use of that information. Demitrio Aristides figured out how to do it while maintaining his sense of self due to having accidentally fractured his soul as a young man. This then lets one achieve a greater portion of the god's former power than is normally possible with magic, something he calls "primal magic". Furthermore, Oliver's recently missing friend Yuri Leik was the "ignorant" fragment of his soul, spun off into an Artificial Human, and his Significance Sense was an expression of him unconsciously tapping into the Grand Records.
• In Slayers, the Claire Bible. It's literally the complete and infinite knowledge of a god, the Water Dragon King.
• In That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, this in the web novel is the name of Yuuki Kagurazaki's Origin Skill and ultimate ability "Information King Akashic Records". Formerly owned by Stellar Dragon King Veldanava, this skill allows the user full access to use and create each and every skill created or could possibly be created in the world, along with knowledge about everything in existence. When combined with "Creation Lord Ahura Mazda", the user is effective The Maker capable of creating entire worlds, universes, or realities at will. However, Yuuki himself couldn't use this skill to its full potential due lack of experience and needing an outside source to even gain access to the skill in question, which is part of the reason he still loses despite owning one of, if not the, most overpowered abilities in the whole series (the other being of course Rimuru evolving a Skill powerful enough to rival it).
• The Wizard's Manual of the Young Wizards series acts as an access point for something like the Akashic Records. Note that it's never referred to as "Akashic", and in one book is actually referred to as a database.

Live-Action TV

• In the Charmed (1998) episode "They're Everywhere", the plot revolves around demons wanting to find the knowledge contained in the Akashic records.
• In season two of the television series Eureka, director of Global Dynamics Allison Blake discovers that through a freak accident, her son Kevin is able to access and control what they refer to as the "Akashic Field."
  • Actually, this story element is foreshadowed in the pilot episode. Specifically in the first few minutes. When Susan Perkins is in bed, yelling at her husband, take a look at the topic of her reading material.
• In Kamen Rider Double, the Gaia Library which Phillip (and later Wakana) can access is said to be the sum of the Earth's knowledge on all subjects, making it a combination of this trope and The Lifestream.
• Kamen Rider Saber has the Almighty Book, a Great Big Book of Everything containing all of humanity's knowledge, from stories to scientific achievements. It has been the source of conflict between the Sword of Logos and the Megids which continues until Touma Kamiyama came along. It still holds great significance for the war, even though its pages have been torn off to become the Wonder Ride Books.
• Ultraman Orb: The SSP (Something Search Party) has an Encyclopedia called the Pacific Records, which they often use as reference to study unnatural phenomenon. More often than not, the phenomenon turns out to be kaiju activities, for the titular Ultra to battle at the end of the episode.
• In Ultraseven Evolution, the 2002 direct-to-video follow-up of Ultraseven, the antagonist tries to rewrite Akashic Records to alter the Earth's future to fit his own purpose. The fifth and final volume of this work is even titled Akashic Records.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Arcana Evolved — a 3.x variant system — includes a class called the Akashic, whose abilities come from having access to the universe's group memory.
  • The Immortal's Handbook, a 3.5e fan supplement for extremely high-level gameplay, refers to the RPG books used by the players as the Akashic Records, with the suggestion that the characters might have to stop someone from attempting to control or rewrite them by killing the DM.
• Exalted has the Procedures of Creation, containing literally all of Creation's natural science and thaumaturgy in a library bigger than a city.
• In Nomine: Access to the Akashic Record is available by name as a Destiny attunement. Angels with this ability can send a question to the "vaults of Heavenly Omniscience" and get an answer if it can be answered in three words or less... and if the angel pays a lot of Essence up front.
• Mage: The Ascension features the Akashic Brotherhood, a magical Tradition with a tendency to consult the Records, a well-established expertise with Mind magic... and kung fu.
• Mage: The Awakening: The Daksha Legacy can consult the Records with their third eyes. Initially, they can only read the past; at their highest levels of power, they can read what is yet to come as well.
• Pathfinder has a couple of spells interacting with the Akashic Record, described as "the extraplanar repository of all experiences that have ever occurred". The most amusing is the 9th-level psychic-only spell Akashic Form, which allows you to edit the Akashic Record to make a perfect record of your physical body at the time the spell is cast that lasts for 24 hours, allowing you to come back from the dead exactly as you were (with equipment if you decide to appear where you died, without if you decide to appear farther away).
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Black Library, hidden in the depths of the webway, supposedly holds all secrets of the universe but can only be entered to those who have "mastered the Warp within themselves". Seeing how in real life, Black Library is Games Workshop's publishing house...
  • Books written by Graham Mcneill regarding the Adeptus Mechanicus often make reference to the Akashic Record as something they're actively trying to access, having seen parallels with their belief that mankind in its glory days achieved all possible scientific knowledge and that the only acceptable form of progress is rediscovering old records (things like 'innovation' and 'the scientific method' are false paths that can only lead to disaster).

Toys

• Digimon features AncientWisemon who, according to the Digimon Reference Book, possesses the Akashic Records that records "all of the excellent intellects of ancient times", meaning that there is nothing which the Digimon doesn't know.

Video Games

• The song Almagest in beatmania IIDX 17th style SIRIUS has this as its genre title. Considering how quite a few bemani songs have ridiculous genres as it is, it really didn't register on the fandom's radar.
• COGEN: Sword of Rewind: "Akashic Records" are the titular city's main database. Since the entire game takes place in a simulation, it probably does contain everything about the city. The concept is also referenced in Akasha's name, an archivist AI, who's almost omnipotent inside the simulation.
• In Dominions 3, this Astral spell reveals all magical sites within a province.
• EXA_PICO:
  • In Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia, the Akashic Record is a rare item that is supposed to be like a CD for a 3D holographic projector, but since the technology for using it properly has been lost, it's only used now for crafting.
  • In the prequel series, Surge Concerto, it's been explicitly stated once by the creators that accessing the Seven Dimensions (Space, Time, Possibilities, Qualia and World) that form its world setting is pretty much like perusing the Akashic Records of that universe.
• The records also appear as an item available for points scored in multiplayer games in Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light.
• In Final Fantasy Type-0, the Akashic Records (renamed into the Nameless Tome in the English version) contain information about all magic in existence, as well as doubling as a Tome of Prophecy and Fate. According to in-game bios, no human should have the ability to read them, but Queen was able to do so with some difficulty, and it's implied that the rest of Class Zero can do so as well. At some point, their mentor figure even tells them that they have the ability to "write" the last few pages, which plays into the final chapter of the game when Class Zero needs to decide what to do once Tempus Finis arrives.
• In Guild Wars 2 the All, or Antikytheria, is a symbolic representation of Tyria and the forces that govern. Mortals who see it perceive a vast and complex machine with Tyria at its heart, but they can only see a fraction of the forces at work and how they interact. The Eternal Alchemy of the Asura is either a very similar principle or their own perception of the All.
• In various media by Type-Moon the ultimate goal of the magi of the Mage's Association is to find a path to obtain the Akashic Records. Another name for this in the Nasuverse is The Origin, and also the goal of every magus. Fundamentally, the Akashic Records is a database for the world's history and serves as a place where souls are recycled. While some mages have achieved this, almost all of them vanish without a trace once they do, and it's assumed that they Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence or something; the Mage's Association would like to access it and not have that happen to them. There are a number (five) mages in history who came extremely close and accessed a tiny portion of Akasha, which gave them a spell of True Magic, instantly making them among the most powerful mages on the planet.
  • Close contact with the Akasha through near-death experience may provide that person with an extremely rare ability called "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception", which currently, only two characters in the multiverse possess. Specifically, it allows the user to see the Akashic record of the predetermined "death" of a person or object in the form of lines and cut the object in pieces by tracing the line with a cutting tool of any size and/or sharpness, even hands, or outright kill the object (or person) by stabbing them in their "point of death", erasing them from existence.
  • The original goal of the Holy Grail War was to reach "the origin" which, unsurprisingly, is Akasha. The Holy Grail is a means to channel The Origin's powers by pulling Heroic Spirits from the Akashic Records and make them fight as Servants in the war. When all seven Servants are returned to the Grail, it will access the Akashic Records and allow the granting of one wish through the temporary omnipotence of the Grail.
  • In The Garden of Sinners, we meet an avatar of the Akashic Record itself, in the form of Shiki Ryougi's "third personality". Because it is the embodiment of Akasha, it is both omnipotent and omniscient, but it is also absolutely neutral in all things, neither doing anything nor desiring anything. It only briefly revealed itself to one person, for unclear reasons, and even its "host" is unaware that it exists.
  • Fate/Grand Order reveals that while the Akashic Records are the source of the existence of everything within the "Nasuverse", there do exist beings that are not affected by the Origin since they were not "born" from it. These beings are known as "Outer Gods", and they're the In-Universe inspiration for the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts II there is a weapon called the Akashic Record, which appears as a book with a handle, wielded like a shield.
  • The Book of Prophesies, introduced within Kingdom Hearts χ, serves as this for the entire universe in everything but name. It has information about things that was, things that is, and things that will be and, according to Maleficent via a retroactively added scene within Kingdom Hearts coded, one can, among other things, create new worlds simply by adding onto it.
• Minna to Akashic Heroes was a Capcom game about the Book of Destiny.
• In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Akashic Points are used to travel to other dimensions to fight certain assassins.
• Phantasy Star Online 2 has a mysterious entity called the Akashic Record, which is essentially a record of all things past, present, and future. Xion, being an All-Powerful Bystander, has direct access to the Akashic Record and essentially acts as its "librarian", granting her omniscience. In EPISODE 5, the whole thing winds up turning into an Alternate Universe that re-interprets its own records into a fantasy world setting, including and up to pulling characters from The Multiverse. And at the end of EPISODE 6, its origins are revealed to be the protagonist caught in a Stable Time Loop due to the Profound Darkness possessing them and time traveling to the beginning of the universe to purify their existence, becoming the Akashic Records as Xion then creates the protagonist to sustain the cycle.
• Shin Megami Tensei
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has Hijiri, who actually finds the Akashic Records and thoroughly studies them to gain knowledge about the demonic realm. At first he just does this for survival and to help you out, but eventually he becomes Drunk with Power and declares his intent to use what he's learned to create a Reason, thus entering the competition to make a better world. Unfortunately his attempt to backstab you is cut short when he is suddenly captured by Isamu, then used as a sacrifice to empower his Reason.
  • Devil Survivor 2 has the Septentriones be the servants of the Administrator of the Akashic Records. Depending on player choices, one can either create a new world through the power of the Records, boot the current Administrator into oblivion, set someone else in her place or outright rewrite reality back to how it was before the Administrator decided to start messing with the world. No, really, that literally is what you can do. The Akashic Records in this game are a compendium of concepts and ideas made into files for the entire world, and each individual file can be "selected" and "deleted" if necessary by Polaris. This is also why the Void is appearing: the files for these records were erased, and where there is no data, only absolute nothingness remains.
  • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth has the Theatre District, which is both the final labyrinth and where the game actually takes place in, is stated to be a type of Akashic Record where negative memories are sent to the inhabitants of the world.
• In Super Robot Wars, the Super Robot Cybuster, aside from being able to access the Akashic Records via the in-built Laplace Computer, has a Limit Break known as the "Akashic Buster", which, mind you, probably has nothing to do with the actual records themselves. But, hey, it sounds cool... Actually elaborated upon in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3; various infinite energy sources like Getter Rays, Ide, and Psychic Power are aspects of the Akashic Record...also known as Fate.
• In Tales of the Abyss, The Score is this in a nutshell, although it's mostly used to see the past and the future. There's also "Akashic Torment", one of Sync's Mystic Artes.
• In Ys: Memories of Celceta the Akashic Records is not a book or even a collection of them. Rather, it's a big spherical artifact that contains all the world's blueprints including the world's history and future events planned. The Mask of the Sun is the master control key that can not only allow the wearer to obtain its vast knowledge but can forcibly rewrite the record. This is extremely dangerous, because if you alter the record for concept A to change how it relates to concept B but do not make the corresponding change in record B as well, the universe will try to make both contradictory versions exist simultaneously, which could theoretically destroy the world - and few people are capable of even identifying all the records that would be impacted by any change, much less updating them all in a way that ensures that everything remains consistent. The Akashic Records permanently shut itself down when the Mask of the Sun was destroyed.

Webcomics

• In Autumn Bay, sorcerers can access the Akashic Record. In fact, if they aren't careful, or are inexperienced, it is possible that they get lost inside their own personal "bubble" (this happens to Ghoul as part of his Traumatic Superpower Awakening).
• The Dragon Doctors:
  • Kili the shaman accessed the specific Akashic records used by the long-dead first incarnation of the Hearts Society to research what happened to their patient, an unfortunate young woman who'd been trapped in a cave and turned to stone for 2000 years.
  • After the fourth "Breaking", about 600 years before the series, a "cyber-shaman" encoded instruction manuals on science into the Akashic records in order to speed up the rebuilding of civilization.

Western Animation

• One season finale of Jackie Chan Adventures featured the already defeated Big Bad going after a literal and physical version of the Records (The Book of Ages) and rewriting it so that they were never defeated in the first place thousands of years ago. The good guys are only able to undo (or detect) the damage because sneaky little Jade accidentally tore out a physical piece of the Records just before the change was written into it; the piece just happened to contain the description of her becoming a force for good against the Big Bad.

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