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Cosmic Power - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Jul 19 2024

Cosmic Power (trope)

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERnote 

Cosmic Power is the name of a superpower and magic that manipulates the forces of the cosmos. This ability can command cosmic elements such as moons, suns, stars, and even voids. One could even call them down, such as using a Meteor-Summoning Attack. There is also how users can manipulate matter, energy, time, and space while even possibly reality. They even could be aware of things throughout the cosmos through their senses. A Cosmic Entity can have this ability by default. There are also cases of mortals being able to wield this power, such as gaining enlightenment. Some of these powers and magics may draw from the very cosmos itself. Due to how potent such a power could be, it could even be a Story-Breaker Power.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • In Cardcaptor Sakura Clow Reed draws the power for his magic from the sun and moon, while the eponymous character coming into her own magical potential draws strength from the stars.
  • Fairy Tail: Jellal Fernandes uses Heavenly Body Magic, a powerful form of magic that allows him to manifest the properties or channel the energy of celestial objects.
  • Sailor Moon: Sailor Scouts / Soldiers / Senshi use the power of their eponymous astral object for magic.
  • Saint Seiya: Cosmos is energy traced back to the Big Bang that Saints use by 'burning' it to replicate the same phenomenon to perform supernatural feats. Stronger Saints that have gained awareness of their Seventh and Eighth Sense gain greater power than normal Saints.
  • Shaman King: The Great Spirit is bestowed onto the Shaman King, who became Hao after he won the Shaman Fight. During the final battle between Yoh and the other Elemental Warriors, Hao summons the Great Spirit as his Oversoul, allowing him to control any aspect of the universe where he can create cosmic phenomena.

Comic Books 

  • Marvel Universe:
    • The Power Cosmic is an unlimited type of energy where different Cosmic Entities connected to it have fantastic powers that make them godlike. Beings like Galactus and his Heralds like Silver Surfer gain powers from it.
    • The One Above All has the power to transform any being temporarily He sees fit into Captain Universe, giving them access to the Power Cosmic (more specifically, an offshoot called the Uni-Power) for a very limited amount of time— usually enough for them to accomplish a certain goal such as rescuing innocents from a disaster.
    • Cosmic Energy: As the Power Cosmic is the Power of the Cosmos itself, Cosmic Energy is the ambient energy spread across and from the very universe itself. A number of Superheroes in Space, such as Captain Marvel (just about all of them) and Quasar (specifically all of them) and some of the most powerful species in the universe, The Celestials, The Watchers, and The Eternals, use and can access this energy. And unlike The Power Cosmic, just having access to this power doesn’t automatically make someone a Physical God with Reality Warping powers.
      • Cosmic Radiation: The difference between Cosmic Radiation and the Power Cosmic is that the Cosmic Raws are considerably weaker and less "raw" than those of the Power Cosmic. Those imbued with cosmic rays can develop superpowers, and with enough of it, they can actually be granted the Power Cosmic. In fact, if what Cosmic Ghost Rider said is to be believed, and that’s a big if, then the radiation emitting from Herald of Galactus can also give others powers, as he demonstrated with the Fantastic Four… It's a Long Story.
      • Special mention goes to Franklin Richards, the son of Reed Richards and Susan Storm. In addition to being the child to two humans imbued with Cosmic Radiation and having the X-Gene (which may or may not have been retconned), Franklin has the unique and specific power of being a Reality Warper. And unlike Jamie Braddock's Quantum Mechanics and Proteus's Psionic, Franklin’s is registered as "Universal". This means Franklin uses the very universe itself to reshape and even create entire realities. Furthermore, Franklin is destined to travel alongside Galactus toward the Natural End of Time and replace him as the new World Eater in the next Universe, granting him the Power Cosmic. Assuming he technically doesn’t already have it.
      • In addition Cosmic Radiation is considered the opposite of Gamma Radiation. Meaning while the source of Gamma Radiation comes from The-One-Bellow-All, Cosmic Radiation comes from The-One-Above-All, The Maker, and the Top God of the entire Marvel Verse.
    • Old Power: On the Planet Sakaar, the Shadow People studied and made their own artificial version of the Power Cosmic, calling it Old Power. However, Old Power is an Inversion, as it draws power from the Earth under their feet instead of the stars or cosmic powers above.
    • Power Primordial: The Power Primordial is a special form of energy that doesn’t take power or energy from the current cosmos, but instead from the residual energies of the Big Bang. The ones who possess the Power Primordial are the Elders of the Universe. Characters who are old enough to say they were born not long after the Big Bang.

Fan Works 

  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Luna is often depicted as having power over the entire night sky, and not just the moon. Many fics depict her as literally arranging the movements of the stars.

Film — Animation 

  • Aladdin (1992, Disney): Genies have "phenomenal cosmic power!" Jafar demonstrates this when he wishes to be a genie himself and begins rearranging stars and planets to suit his whims... right before getting sucked into a lamp because he forgot about the "itty bitty living space" part.
  • Hercules (1997): At the end of the movie, Zeus moves the stars to create a constellation of Hercules in honor of Hercules' great heroics.

Film — Live-Action 

  • Star Wars: Midi-chlorians aside, The Force is, at its core, this, being a field of energy created by life itself; there's a Living and a Cosmic Force, the former of which springs from the latter, and those who are Force-sensitive can be influenced by it.

Live-Action TV 

  • Moon Knight (2022): As the Egyptian god of the moon, Khonshu is able to manipulate the stars and moon to his whim. In "Friendly Type" he intentionally causes a solar eclipse to get the attention of the other Egyptian gods. Later in the same episode, when Steve and Layla need to know the positions of the stars as they were 2000 years ago so they can use a star map to locate Ammit's Tomb, Khonshu rewinds the sky to how it was on that particular night. This act however enrages the other Gods to the point they trap Khonshu in a statue. In the final episode, after Khonshu has been set free again, he intentionally makes it night way earlier than it should so Marc can summon his powers.

Video Games 

  • Elden Ring: The stars, light, and night all have different impacts on the magics found within the Lands Between.
    • Glintstone Sorceries explicitly draw power from glintstones, which were found as meteorites that fell to Liurnia at some point in the distant past. Gravity sorceries similarly draw power from space, and abilities similar to them are used by creatures such as Fallingstar Beasts and Astels, which are literally malformed stars that have fallen to the Lands Between and are implied to be the adult form of Fallingstar Beasts.
    • As the game goes on, it's heavily implied that this applies to the Faith-based incantations of the Golden Order and Erdtree are this as well, as the Greater Will and the titular Elden Ring both fell into the Lands Between as a star..
    • The Nox people, who lived in the hidden cities of Nokron and Nokstella, use night sorceries, which aren't detected by enemies and are invisible to them. The Nox were banished underground by the Greater Will due to some form of heresy.
    • Metyr, a boss in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, makes explicit the connection between the Greater Will and the cosmos. The daughter of the Greater Will, she manifests an Unrealistic Black Hole in her boss fight that lets her manipulate gravity, summon "fleeting microcosms" that collapse and implode, and blast you with relativistic polar jets. At that point, the music in her boss fight is replaced with an atonal warbling clearly derived from the 'sound' of a black hole.
  • In The Elder Scrolls magic flows from the sun and stars, which are holes in the fabric of reality due to the world's Alien Sky.
  • League of Legends: Zoe is an Aspect Host chosen by the Aspect of Twilight, giving her access to Celestial Magic. She can make and control stars based on her will, blasting energy and summoning meteors.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: The Shadow Queen, Greater-Scope Villain and Final Boss of the game is an Eldritch Abomination whose power is overtly cosmic both appearance and scale. The Seven Crystal Stars contain her sealed power (a rare care of the trademark star Arc Symbol being contextually accurate), her palace contains a Lovecraft-style Apocalyptic Log praising the power of stars to restore the dead, the mere act of unlocking her prison floods the entire planet with darkness, and her spirit takes the form of a Celestial Body with Alien Geometries. So great is her power that the only reason she loses to Mario is, presumably, Resurrection Sickness, and even them Mario can only win by using her own Crystal Stars against her. Had the Queen been given time to recover her strength, she would've likely been completely, laughably unstoppable.
  • Pokémon: Generation III introduced the move Cosmic Power, which allows the Pokemon to absorb mystical power from space, which improves their defenses.
  • Runescape: Cosmic Runes are crafted on an altar found on Zanaris, the moon of Gilenor (the plane/planet where the game is set). They're mostly used for enchantment spells, giving jewelry, and crossbow bolts a wide variety of effects, ranging from acting as portable teleportation devices or lucky charms in the case of jewelry to having the ability to do severe damage to enemies in the case of bolts.

Webcomics 

  • Starslip: After the Cosmic Retcon Continuity Reboot, Vanderbeem and his crew are dispatched on a First Contact mission with the Antherelix Polygmeon, a species that's implied to be as old as the universe itself. The first time, they're just shown the door, metaphorically, and teleported back onto their ship, which is then teleported to Earth; the second time, a full-scale rearrangement of the galaxy happens, and every planet that was once part of or known to the Consortium— which became defunct after the multiverse-traversing Shift Drive was made illegal— is put within mere light-years of each other, making interstellar travel trivial by the standards of the setting's technology.

Western Animation 

  • The Owl House: Implied. The Collectors are celestial beings from the cosmos of the Demon Realm and have powerful magic that can alter reality, but Titans are the only species that can resist their powers.
  • Winx Club: Cosmix is the magic bestowed to the Winx Club by Queen Dorana to combat the Staryummies. Cosmix Fairies can restore dying stars and close the black holes that Staryummies come from.