"I need you to let me touch it. The human soul — it's pure... energy. If I can siphon some of that off, I might be able to bring Sam and Dean back."
— Castiel the angel (to Bobby), Supernatural, "Frontierland"
A Sub-Trope of Elemental Powers. This is the power over spirits, or spiritual energy. People using this power are likely to be able to manipulate this energy, which may or may not equate to magic, depending on the setting. Expect them to be able to speak to the spirits of the dead, as well as have some authority or control over them. Possession and Mind Control may also be within their powers.
This can be either a villainous or heroic power, depending on how it's portrayed and used. If portrayed negatively, this may overlap with power over darkness. If it is used by a villain, be very careful — it's likely they have some very nasty powers, like being able to remove people's souls from their bodies or draining their life force. This may or may not instantly kill them. People using this power are also likely to be quiet, creepy, and stoic. Can be Element Number Five.
Unlike some of the other Elemental Powers, this power is more closely associated with subtlety, subterfuge and deceit rather than blasting stuff, though there are exceptions, such as spirit blasts and Faux Flame. Oh, and be careful if you try to kill these people — it's very likely that they'll come back as ghosts, possibly even stronger than they were in life. At extremes, they may become a Psychopomp with complete control over the forces of life and death. Keep a can handy to cram them into, and look out for external containers they might use to sustain their life or powers.
Super-Trope to Soul-Powered Engine. Compare Your Soul Is Mine!, which involves actually acquiring or stealing souls (and its subtrope Soul Eating), and Psychic Powers. It may be the justification for why The Devil wants to make deals to claim a human soul for his own. Depending on the setting, this may or may not overlap with Ki Manipulation and Life Energy. Some of the ways to use this power overlap with Power of the Void, though conceptually they're not that similar. Contrast Necromancy, which is a power over death and manipulation of The Undead, although both can overlap. See also Our Souls Are Different.
Not to be confused with the concert documentary Soul Power. Also has nothing to do with Tom Morello's guitar.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Black Clover:
- Lucius Zogratis. His innate magic is Soul Magic, transforming the soul, the source of human life, spirit, and magic, of anyone he touches. He uses it to transform himself and Sister Lily into the angelic "true form of humanity". As a side effect, he can also brainwash his target by instilling an overriding belief that overpowers their personality, making them consciously think that Lucius is righteous in his actions. Even if deep down they do not wish to follow his orders, they will still be compelled to fight for him and believe in his cause.
- Lucius can also collect the souls of multiple people and fuse them together to create his Guardian Angels. Because they are comprised of multiple souls, they possess vast pools of mana and multiple magic attributes that they can use simultaneously in combat. As it turns out, this also makes them vulnerable to Rades and his Soul Corpse Magic, as he can easily exorcise the Guardian Angels' souls merely by touching them, therefore preventing them from repairing themselves and taking them out instantaneously.
- Bleach: The powers of incorporeal beings are based on their "spiritual power", otherwise known as Reiryoku, and their ability to control it. The energy that is actually used manifests as "spiritual pressure", Reiatsu, which determines the strength and durability of a spirit. This includes Soul Reapers (kido spells, shikai/bankai, resistance to injury) as well as Hollows. Some humans are able to use spiritual pressure/powers as well (Orihime, Chad, Quincies like Uryu, Bounts, etc.). Soul Reapers and Hollows are effectively spirits or ghosts. Humans who possess spiritual power, even if they don't have extra abilities from it, can see ghosts and therefore can interact with both Soul Reapers and Hollows as well as normal ghosts. Then there is the Zanpakutō themselves, which are made of the souls of dead Soul Reapers.
- Guilty Crown: Despite it being explained in-universe as a scientific Applied Phlebotinum, the Void Genome power is referred to numerous times as this, as its user can temporarily extract a physical manifestation of a person's true, hidden personality.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, the D'Arby brothers each wield Stands with power over human souls. Daniel J. D'Arby's Stand Osiris can steal human souls when they admit they are defeated and store them in physical objects he can manipulate. His younger brother Telence D. D'Arby's Stand Atum has a broader range of soul powers: he can steal souls after they admit defeat, but can also act even when a soul falters to restrain them, and even read a person's soul to answer yes or no questions.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Chariot Requiem can manipulate the souls of all living beings within a large area, using this ability in such ways as swapping people's bodies, turning Stand Users' own Stands against them, and, with enough time, transforming all living beings in the area into Humanoid Abominations.
- Jujutsu Kaisen:
- A supremely disturbing example is provided in the form of Mahito: his Cursed Technique, "Idle Transfiguration", allows him to touch the soul of either himself or his victim and alter its shape. Because the shape of the body is determined by the shape of the soul in this universe, Mahito can radically change a person's biology and physical make-up with just a touch. An ability he uses primarily to transform his unlucky victims into art.
- Suguru Geto's Cursed Technique allows him to absorb and later manipulate cursed spirits, forcing them to act as extensions of his will and fight on his behalf. He infamously orchestrated an event known as the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, in which hordes of cursed spirits under his control attacked Shinjuku and Kyoto at the same time, forcing Jujutsu HQ to summon every able-bodied sorcerer available to repel them.
- Nobara Kugisaki's "Straw Doll Technique" technique has the ability to directly attack the soul of whoever she's fighting. If she has the materials to work with, she can attack anyone, from anywhere, striking directly at their soul and bypassing all defenses, and it doesn't appear to have any severe physical backlash like Inumaki's Cursed Speech. For most of her fights, she's not in a position to take full advantage of this as her enemies tend to ambush her and force her to use feints and misdirection to keep them off-balance in between Resonance attacks, but if someone were to give her a piece of her opponent in advance, she could safely stay miles away while hammering them to death.
- Mob Psycho 100: Keiji Mogami can control the evil spirits he has absorbed over his lifetime. However, there is a limit to how many he can use at a time.
- Natsume of Natsume's Book of Friends has this power, which lets him see youkai, draws youkai to him and makes him taste good to them, and lets him punch youkai clear across a room even though he only has average strength.
- The AT Fields of both the Angels and Evangelions from Neon Genesis Evangelion. The Movie eventually reveals that every living being has one, and that is all that keeps them as separate entities. When Lilith neutralises the AT Fields of everything on Earth...
- One Piece:
- It turns out this is the true power of Brook's Revive-Revive Fruit. He can separate his soul from his body and channel Ghostly Chills through his sword.
- The Pirate Emperor Big Mom has eaten the Soul Soul Fruit, which gives the ability to take souls and lifespans from people and can store them inside inanimate objects, trees, and animals giving them life as creatures called "Homies". She can also put part of her own soul into objects, allowing her to manipulate them to her own will; it lets her manipulate a living flame and a living thundercloud as her "guards". It is said that she cannot put souls inside corpses. Hers and Brook's powers are diametrically opposed as Brook is able to fight, injure, and intimidate the Homies like no one else can.
- In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, magic is revealed to be the power of human souls.
- The Cancer saints in Saint Seiya have a cosmo affinity and an attack spread based around summoning or banishing the dead. This means they routinely travel to the underworld, attack with the ghosts of the dead, and are pretty hard to kill. Even Thanatos, the god of Death, had a handful and got shoved into a box.
- Soul Eater characters almost all utilize abilities or techniques that weaponize the power of their souls. The most classic is one's "soul wavelength", described as the "rhythm" of the soul that, in the case of Meister and Weapon pairs, the harmonization and amplification of their wavelengths is the key to drawing out greater power from both parties. Meisters like Black*Star and Stein have souls so potent they can attack others with direct applications of their soul wavelengths without any Weapon amplification, bypassing physical toughness to strike at foes internally. And then there are beings like the Kishin, Lord Death, or Excalibur, who are so powerful that just their mere existence if they're not bothering to rein in their Soul Wavelengths will cause those who lack enough willpower to mentally collapse in their passive presence.
- Undead Unluck: Late into the manga, it turns out that Soul power ends up being the core of a Negation. It's intrinsic to the soul of the Negators and can affect how a Negation works — for instance, Nico uses it to allow him to perfectly remember all he knows without suffering from Unforgettable's old drawback of being limited by how much memory the brain can handle. It also seems to store the consciousnesses of all the previous users of the ability, who choose who to pass it onto.
- Several characters in YuYu Hakusho have variants of soul power. Yusuke, Genkai, Kuwabara, and Sensui all have attacks based on "reiki" or spirit energy. Kuwabara also has a heightened spirit awareness. Kaito is able to remove souls from bodies by the application of his taboo power.
Audio Plays
- Jan Tenner: Big Bad Seytania creates most of her puppets by pushing people's souls out of their bodies with her magic. The shells have no will of their own and only do what they are told. Only those performing tasks that required independent thought are allowed to keep their souls. The souls themself are forced to wander the night looking for a new body to take.
Comic Books
- Demon Spawn: The villain Nightflame can remove souls from their bodies. She pulls Supergirl's soul out from her body and makes off with it back to her home dimension.
- Kid Eternity, due to temporarily winding up in Heaven too early, came back with the power to summon spirits of the dead for advice — and, for some reason, also people from mythology. He's a decidedly heroic version of this trope, though Post-Crisis he's had a Darker and Edgier reboot.
- In Kryptonite Nevermore, Superman loses most of his power and Wonder Woman's mentor I-Ching helps him get his powers back. Ching can use his mystical knowledge to pull souls from bodies and cure them.
- Thanos from Ultimate Fantastic Four has power over souls, and may transfer the soul of someone into another body as a way to reward or punish. He has also shown the ability to project his own presence into the bodies of others, quickly burning them out in the process.
- The utopia The Whistle is working to make in The Unsinkable Ship of Fools is one built on the memories of the train's inhabitants, their goal being to collect enough souls to make the new world real.
Fan Works
- A Crown of Stars: Avalon's Royal Family has soul manipulation powers: they can remove them from a body, talk to them, heal them, mend them, split them… Shinji and Asuka witness this first-hand when Rayana pulls Yui's soul from Unit 01 and Daniel mends Kyoko's soul.
- The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Graverobber Rogues have the ability to bind soul fragments to objects, allowing them to be used for extra attacks or teleportation.
- Ghosts in the Graveyard:
- While being attacked by a creature made out of ectoplasmic goo, Jermaine gains access to ectoplasmic energy blasts that can be fired from his hands. On Halloween night, he gains access to an ultrasonic Ghostly Wail, which is accompanied by glowing green soundwaves made of ecto-energy.
- Stingy Jack can unleash ectoplasmic energy blasts.
- Hellsister Trilogy: Mordru uses his magic to draw Supergirl's dark side out of her body and give that piece of her soul a physical body.
- Hope Springs Eternal (Hercules): As the God of Death, Hades has power over souls. Indeed, his attachment to Leuke and her attachment to him gives the dryad a soul.
- Laserllama: Spirit Caller Shamans represent the more peaceful versions of the trope, being able to summon a Geist that acts on their behalf and having a variety of spells to imbue themselves with spirit-like powers.
- The LUNAverse (RWBY): This is revealed to be Lucian's true semblance in "Blood Moon Rising", which allows him to manipulate aura and copy semblances.
- Accidently invoked in One to Find All where Salem using a forbidden spell to summon someone who she indoctrinate into her minion so that she can win her eon-long war against Ozpin. The spell would've killed her had it not been for her Complete Immortality and only stopped working until all her reserves of magic were drained completely. By the time the forbidden spell stopped, six of Izuku's classmates had their souls taken and reincarnated on Remnant.
- Pony POV Series: It turns out the Element of Desire that Dark World Rarity ends up with has this. Rarity can allow ghosts to inhabit her body with her, which gives her the ability to project them as golems to help her fight. She also nearly takes Fluttercruel's One-Winged Angel form Odyne's soul to seal it inside herself, but Odyne fends her off.
- Scar's Samsara has magic based on African shamanism, where characters can commune with spirits and harness their power.
Film — Live-Action
- The Chronicles of Riddick (2004): The Lord Marshal of the Necromongers was transformed into a "Holy Half-Dead" because he visited and returned from the Underverse, the Necromongers' promised land. He shows particular mastery of souls, as he can move his own soul separate from his physical body, giving the illusion of Super-Speed. He can also directly take hold of anyone else's soul, with the victim dying as soon as he releases it.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: The last of the Infinity Stones to be revealed is the Soul Stone, which can only be obtained by sacrificing your loved one ("a soul for a soul"). Aside from completing the Infinity Gauntlet and Thanos briefly using it to rat out the real Doctor Strange during the confrontation at Titan in Avengers: Infinity War, the stone is not utilized in any capacity, making its exact power ambiguous. It is implied, though, that the stone's real usage is to trap the souls of the people erased by the Blip, enabling them to be restored to life when the Blip is undone.
- Warcraft (2016): Gul'dan's powers center around manipulation of souls — he can remove souls, take a soul of one thing and put it in other, giving the latter life, or use souls as pure fuel to power his spells.
Literature
- The Alliance Saga: Clouded Moon: When a cat becomes the captain of their colony, they gain "blessings" from the Spirits Beyond that can help them survive otherwise-fatal injuries. It turns out that this works because the Alliance cats are descended from necromancers who can absorb souls to extend their lifespans.
- Dis Acedia: This is Shroud's and Graffiacane's main power. The former uses it to create familiars, the latter for necromancy.
- Discharge! (gelefant):
- Gina/Ghost Girl can control ectoplasmic/ghostly energy, frequently in the form of a Hand Blast.
- Penelope Poison can fire orbs of spectral energy from her hands.
- Dragonlance: Mina is a villainous example of this trope, as a Dark Messiah necromancer.
- The Dresden Files:
- Soulfire. Generally a power of angels, Soulfire draws on the soul of the user to form a foundation that strengthens his magic, especially constructive magic. Fallen Angels can grant Hellfire, which also turbocharges magic, but is especially good with the destructive spells.
- Souls also seem to be an aspect of magic due to the similarities of its various (intricate but internally consistent) rules to those of "normal" magic. A wizard can put Soul/Hellfire to both Good and Bad uses, depending on the wizard and his/her intent and purpose. Harry spent a while fueling both his shields and attacks with Hellfire, and was able to make both constructs and attacks with his Soulfire. He even charged a Theugy ritual with some Soulfire! Using too much Soul/Hellfire will drain your soul and thereby kill you, just like how using too much magic will kill you by draining you of all of your energy. Need that ATP to do bodily functions? Not anymore you don't!
- General interactions seem to affect changes in one's soul — something as simple as a hug can be seen hours later by Bob. This is apparently the mechanism of how true love protects someone from a White Court Vampire, for example — in consummating that love, some of the couple's soul is shared, and that soul defends their love.
- Earth's Scariest Monsters!:
- The ghost Nicholette can control ectoplasmic/ghostly energy, frequently in the form of a Hand Blast.
- The Saturday morning spirit Saturnos can fire ectoplasmic energy blasts from his hands.
- In "Saturday Morning Fever," Jermaine gains the ability to fire ectoplasmic energy blasts of his own from his hands as part of his Saturday morning-induced trance while in Saturnos' realm in the Ghost World.
- In her Samhain Form, the ghost Ashley gains ectoplasmic energy blasts as one of her new powers.
- Lavinia, another ghost, has ectoplasmic energy blasts as one of her abilities.
- In his Samhain Form, the vampire Vorigan gains red ectoplasmic energy blasts as one of his new powers.
- Erina Jones, another ghost, has ectoplasmic energy blasts as one of her powers. She can also conjure weapons made out of ectoplasmic energy.
- In his Samhain Form, the ghostly black bullmastiff Shadow can release orbs of spectral energy from his mouth.
- In his Samhain Form, the ghostly stallion Spectre can unleash orbs of spectral energy from his mouth.
- Holiday Heroes: Jillian, Adam, Dolores, Hazel, and Stitches can all control spectral energy.
- Old Kingdom: Necromancy works like this, since necromancers have to literally cross over into the realm of death and bind spirits to their will in order to summon them as undead.
- An Outcast in Another World: Soul Burn is a spell that drains a user’s life essence in return for massively increased power. It’s effective, but the user is doomed the second they use the Skill even once.
- Salamandra: Lillith can control ghostly energy.
- Slayers: The fifth branch of Shamanism is Astral/Spirit Shamanism, which focuses on spells dealing directly with souls and the astral plane. Example spells include blasts of pure astral energy that can actually harm Mazoku (which are pretty much immune to other forms of shamanistic offense) and dispelling effects. The form of White Magic has been hinted at by the author as being a specialist form of Astral Shamanism focusing on healing and exorcising.
- SporeWiki Fiction Universe: The Entire League of Patrons does this, but The Cleanser in particular seems heavily pre-occupied with this.
- Unlimited Fafnir: Hraesvelgr can manifest its soul outside its body, giving it complete immunity to physical attacks. It can also do this to humans, which paralyses them and allows it to consume their souls.
- Vampire Academy: This is Lissa and Adrian's brand of magic. They use spiritual energy for a variety of effects.
- Warbreaker has Biochromatic Breath. Each person is born with a single Breath which can given to others or used in Awakening to animate and give Commands to organic materials like cloth or wood. Idrians believe that Breath is a person's Soul, meaning that taking other's Breath or using Breaths in Awakening is a horrible sin. The people of Hallandren don't ascribe the same significance to one's Breath, and generally view giving up one's Breath as fine as long as they get paid well for it. Word of God elaborates a little: Breath isn't a person's soul, exactly, but it is a part of it. In the broader context of The Cosmere, each person born on the planet Nalthis has a little more Investiture (basically the Mana that makes up everything) than people on other planets in the form of their Breath, courtesy of resident god Endowment. Giving up their breath puts them a little bit below the baseline of humans, leading to some detrimental effects like being generally more irritable and depressed, make the world in general appear duller, and becoming more susceptible to disease, while holding more Breaths will have the opposite effects.
- Whateley Universe: Stygian can summon ghosts of the dead, even the long-dead. In a bizarre twist, they look out for him. He's suicidally depressed, and several ghosts routinely keep him going to classes and eating meals.
- World's Greatest Animals: The giant Monarch butterfly Flutter has spectral energy blasts as one of her powers.
- In The Zombie Knight, Soul Power manifests in the ability for Servants to make something tougher or to make an attack more potent. It is the only way to harm a reaper, the source of a servant's life and strength, and Aberrations. Soul power can also be used to prevent a weaker servant from using their unique ability. It can be a major deciding factor in fights because of this and as soul power can only increase with age older servants can completely stomp scores of younger ones.
Live-Action TV
- There are several soul manipulators in Supernatural:
- Over the course of Season 6, it is revealed that angels can use souls to gain extra power. In the season finale, the angel Castiel absorbs all the souls in Purgatory and declares himself the new God. This backfires badly since souls aren't the only residents in Purgatory. It doubles as a prison for the Leviathans, the ravenous primordial entities that precede both angels and humanity.
- Demons are also able to use Soul Power, as Crowley considers dealing and soul-numbers the most important aspect of Hell, and in season six, he wanted half of the Purgatory souls. Also, when he is King of Hell, he seems to have more personal power, which is implied to be because he personally owns more souls.
- The Men of Letters can use the power of their own souls to perform particular feats of magic, such as Time Travel.
- In Season 14, Jack is given this power after dying from an incurable illness brought about by the loss of his Nephilim powers and being brought back. Using a little bit of his soul, he would be able to keep himself alive and healthy, but him using his powers to protect his loved ones at the expense of his soul led to him becoming The Soulless.
- Truth Seekers: The plan of the Big Bad relies on this, he wants to sacrifice 200 souls so he can Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
Roleplays
- Kinou Kuruboshi from Fate/Nuovo Guerra uses ghosts as ammunition for her Magitek revolver.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition:
- The slightly obscure Spirit Shaman class from 3.5 is an unusual good-to-neutral take on this trope. The class learns to banish and manipulate spiritual entities such as ghosts and elementals, perform spell-like Ki Manipulation, and eventually even to shove souls back into their bodies to revive people.
- 3.5's slightly less obscure Incarnum concept is this in a general sort of sense — incarnum is soul energy, and the incarnum-using classes get to shape it in various ways, but as their methods essentially just borrow free-flowing soul energy from the immensity around in reality, they can't actually do anything special with specific souls (save for a few exceptions among spells with the incarnum descriptor, which lean toward Powers via Possession).
- Magic: The Gathering splits the field between White and Black magic. The White variant tends to be benevolent, summoning phantom guardians and offering protection, while Black favors malevolent spirits and corrupting, enslaving, or even consuming souls. Naturally, characters and factions that use both tend to emphasize this power. The page image comes from a Blue spell, however, one of the few instances (Blue usually prefers to deal with the mind over the soul, since it prioritizes intellect and logic over spiritual concepts... which is ironic, since its ally colours are White and Black).
- Warhammer: The Lore of Death, a form of magic based on the manipulation of Shyish, the magical Wind associated with spirits, mortality, and the passage of time, tends to function like this — across the franchise, spells from the Lore of Death tend to involve effects such as calling on the spirits of the dead to assail foes (Caress of Laniph, Doom and Darkness), rebuking and commanding spectres (Compel Spirits), exorcising and banishing the same (Death's Release), or extracting and bottling the souls of enemies (Animus Imprisoned); others instead instill or suppress fear, cause targets to age or wither, or kill outright. True Necromancy is technically distinct, being a specific form of Shyish-heavy Dark Magic developed by the first necromancer, Nagash, but the difference can be very difficult to detect for outsiders.
Video Games
- Asura's Wrath: The Deities gain the power for their weapons this way, either through prayer or harvesting human souls by killing them. The Karma Fortress has 7 TRILLION Souls powering it up.
- Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear has a character class called Shaman (which was part
of the wider Forgotten Realms lore, but not available in other games of the Baldur's Gate series). The class is based on being able to see and manipulate spirits.
- BioShock Infinite: The ghost of Lady Comstock has the ability to raise the dead, leading to battles where your enemies are repeatedly resurrected until you destroy the ghost itself.
- BlazBlue: Half of the setting is this and the entire playable cast has it, too.
- Nox Nyctores are powered by human souls. More specifically, they are created by smelting tens of thousands of human souls down to weapons. In just about every case where a playable character has a Nox Nyctores, the weapon is also used to perform the character's Drive attacks.
- Speaking of which, a Drive is a special ability unique to every person that is created from their soul's connection to the Azure, the deepest depth of the afterlife where the souls of all departed people rest.
- The titular BlazBlue/Azure Grimoire is also this in a nutshell, being a piece of Magi Tech that allows a person to tap into the power of the Azure itself.
- Dark Souls uses souls as currency.
- The souls that are really important to the plot are the Lord Souls. These Souls manifested themselves as flames that appeared before a select few — Gwyn the Lord of Sunlight, Gravelord Nito the First of the Dead, the Witch of Izalith and her seven Daughters of Chaos, and the oft-forgotten Furtive Pygmy — and granted them the power to slay the immortal Ancient Dragons and shape the world to their liking. The Pygmy's Lord Soul, the Dark Soul, was inherited by the player character whose true destiny is to bring an end to Gwyn's Age of Fire and begin the Age of Darkness.
- Dark Souls II even has spells that cost souls to use (they're pathetically weak if you don't have any) and an Infinity +1 Sword that does more damage the more souls you are holding (it needs one million to do full damage).
- Dark Souls III has Ludleth of Courland, whose specialty involves using an artifact known as a Transposing Kiln and boss souls to create spells and equipment.
- Demon's Souls. Pretty much every game mechanic — leveling up stats, upgrading equipment, learning new spells and miracles, etc. — requires souls of some kind. The game specifically refers to this as "Soul Arts", and unfortunately, overuse of this kind of power also caused the whole mess that you're trying to fix in the first place.
- In Dice And Fold, some Heroes have the Soul stat, which goes up with every folded (defeated) enemy. It powers up their Skills that use souls, such as the Warlock rolling an extra dice for every 3 souls.
- In Divinity: Original Sin, Source is a cross between this and Life Energy. All living things as well as their very souls are made from Source, and in Divinity: Original Sin II the Player Character can use Source magic to commune with the dead and potentially consume them for power.
- In The Elder Scrolls, Enchanting is carried out by ripping out the souls of creatures using specialized spells, trapping them in gems, and using these gems to enchant items. This is typically done with the souls of beasts and other monstrous creatures — more powerful creatures usually have stronger souls that can make for stronger enchantments. It is possible to do this to sapient races as well, and their souls make for some of the most powerful enchantments, but require rare and special gems to capture them. Trapping the soul of a sapient being is among the most heinous acts possible, since it robs the target of its afterlife and sends them to the Soul Cairn instead. The Soul Cairn is a rather... unpleasant place.
- In Final Fantasy XII, Shemhazai the Whisperer is the Esper of Soul and stated in the backstory to have power over the souls of the underworld. Her ultimate attack, Soul Purge, apparently attacks with "soul energy".
- Granblue Fantasy has a primal beast named Deus Ex Machina. It can move souls around, however, it can't destroy or create new souls.
- Legacy of Kain: Raziel has the power to devour souls and use them to power his Wraith Blade, a sword that is made up of Raziel's future soul.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, within the elemental cultures of Hyrule, the Gerudo are associated with the element of Spirit, though this is not immediately obvious. To reach the Spirit Temple, Gerudo apparently train themselves to see invisible ghosts which can lead them through the Haunted Wasteland (though Link cheats by using the Lens of Truth). Some of the more powerful Gerudo such as Ganondorf and the Twinrova sisters can create ghostly copies of themselves or combine themselves into a more powerful gestalt form. It is later revealed they used the Spirit Temple to brainwash their victims, forcing them to fight for Ganondorf, such as when they placed Nabooru into an Iron Knuckle (which are implied to normally be animated suits of armor) and set her on Link.
- In beta versions of Ocarina of Time, the Gerudo = Spirit connection was a lot more literal and obvious, such as the Gerudo Training Ground containing the Poe Sisters that were later moved to the Forest Temple, and the Poe chase minigame that was later moved to the Kakariko Graveyard. note There is also unused dialogue from Navi implying the flag posts in the Haunted Wasteland would have originally been fake illusory ones (with a real one scattered here and there on the true path), which would have required more Lens of Truth usage.note
- By The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the Gerudo are more associated with the element of Electricity, while the Zonai seem to instead be associated with Spirit. They are responsible for the development of the golem-like Constructs, and have their own Spirit Temple which is used to test their combat abilities in arena-like matches after they are manufactured. Mineru, the Zonai Sage of Spirit, uses her abilities to possess one such Construct to help Link fight.
- Ancillary material from the era of Masterworks provides a little more context to the Gerudo's "Spirit" abilities, such as the theory that they use disembodied spirits to possess animal bones and carcasses in order to produce life-like doppelgangers of people, which is supposedly how Ganondorf was able use a clone of Zelda to infiltrate Hyrule Castle.
- All ether-elemental characters in MARDEK, particularly Qualna. (Qualna has the opposite personality from the one described here, however.) All annunaki have this to a certain extent, since they can perform "soul transfers" upon dying that will allow their souls to inhabit another body.
- The Sorrow in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, who is a spirit medium that could communicate with dead people prior to his passing, and has the power to show people the souls of those they killed.
- Minecraft Dungeons: Some Artifacts require you to absorb Soulsnote from enemies in order to use. Several item perks and enchantments also directly aid the collection of Souls.
- Pokémon: The Ghost-type, in addition to spirits and haunted objects, includes a variety of living, corporeal entities that manifest various spirit-like powers.
- "Channelers" are a relatively common variant of this. Sensu Style Oricorio use their dancing to summon spirits with which to empower themselves and to confuse and stupefy foes. The Alolan form of Marowak channel the grief and regrets of their departed mothers through the bones they wield as clubs in the form of ghostly blue flames. Basculegion use the souls of dead Basculin who failed to swim upstream to empower themselves. Ceruledge wield swords and armor imbued with the grudges and bitterness of long-dead warriors, which they use to empower themselves.
- The Hisuian form of Typhlosion are Psychopomps who transmit spirit energy through their flames to cleanse tormented spirits.
- Annihilape are the result of Primeape who should have died from their own rage managing to cling to life and learning to channel their fury into power "unfettered by the limits of [the] physical body".
- Generally, Ghost-type moves have effects such as battering foes with spirits or spiritual energy (Astral Barrage), manipulating shadows (Shadow Ball, Shadow Claw), attacking from cover or from darkness (Shadow Punch, Shadow Sneak), drawing power from one's negative emotions (Bitter Malice, Rage Fist, Spite), gaining strength from defeated members of your own party (Last Respects), wielding ghostly flames (Infernal Parade; the Fire-type move Will-O-Wisp is also more associated with the Ghost-type than the Fire-type proper), confusing and stupefying foes (Confuse Ray), and creating frightening visions and illusions (Night Shade, Nightmare).
- RuneScape:
- The Soul Split curse allows players to regain health through damaging monsters, restoring life points by a fraction of the damage inflicted.
- Split Soul (both the Eldritch Crossbow's special attack and the Necromancy incantation) temporarily reverses the effect of Soul Split and inflict four times the amount of life points that would've been healed otherwise.
- Various Necromancy abilities revolve around accumulating "Residual Soul" stacks and using them to either stun enemies at the cost of a single stack or spending all the stacks to unleash a volley of attacks.
- In Shining Force, the Desoul spell literally rips someone's soul out of their body and blasts them to the afterlife. It's not seen as evil, though; the heroic wizard Kazin from Shining Force II can learn it (assuming he doesn't choose to become a Sorcerer instead).
- Street Fighter: M. Bison literally uses his soul as a weapon with his infamous "Psycho Power".
- Touhou Project:
- Rin Kaenbyou spends her days carting corpses to a furnace in hell. She can also command their "Spirits" to attack you.
- Eiki Shiki, Yamaxanadu and Komachi Onozuka spend a fair share of time talking with spirits.
- Miyako Yoshika from Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires seems to have the ability to eat spirits to restore health.
- The plot of Undertale is partially caused by Monster's ability to absorb Human SOULs, which are much more powerful than those of Monster's and thus make great MacGuffins. Even one Human SOUL can make a monster extremely powerful (and a monster only needs seven to gain godlike levels of power), but when the humans started a preemptive war over this, the monsters couldn't capture any SOULs before being trapped under Mt. Ebott. By the time of the game, the Monsters are trying to break the Barrier trapping them by hunting the humans who fall into the Underground one-by-one.
Visual Novels
- The Feys in Ace Attorney mostly use this for channeling the dead, but spiritual power can also be used as a sort of lie detector. (One, likely non-canon, manga shows that there's even a hidden technique to "channel" people who are still alive, just to get them someplace they can't go at the moment.)
- Shows up in two variations in Dies Irae:
- First is the magic of Die Ewigkeit which allows one to use souls as a means of both defense and offense. Defensively it allows the user to resist standard weaponry as most weapons can only take one life while they have thousands in stock, hence why only weapons of mass destruction can really hurt them as they are capable of killing thousands. Offensively it acts on a similar principle, taking multiple lives in a single strike. Due to this, soul count and mass is quite important.
- Second is the Sonnenkind. Unlike the regular users of Die Ewigkeit which simply uses souls as fuel, those born as Sonnenkind can manipulate and control the flow of souls directly which is quite important in making sure that the central magic that much of the plot revolves around functions properly. This becomes quite important during the climax of Marie's route where Rea uses her powers to reverse the flow of souls, severely weakening Reinhard allowing Ren to finally defeat him. Despite being an incomplete Sonnenkind, Kasumi can also do this as shown in her own route, though to a fairly limited degree.
- In Fate/stay night and its prequel, Fate/Zero, the Holy Grail and the true artifact powering it, the Greater Grail is actually this. It recreates the souls of dead heroes throughout the ages including from the future, and summons them as familiars called Servants. Even the way it grants wish, it materializes the desire inside the Holy Grail War winner's soul and turn it into reality. Makes sense, since the Holy Grail is actually an attempt to recreate the Third True Magic, whose domain is to materialize and manipulate soul.
Web Animation
- ANJAIL!: The barrier to keep Mikhail locked up is powered by human souls... kinda. When souls enter purgatory to be judged, they leave behind residue that collects into a golden liguid that the Elephants have to use to maintain the barrier.
Webcomics
- Homestuck:
- Aradia is able to hear the voices of the dead and send them to haunt people, and has the ability to remain in the physical world as a ghost. She also has very potent Psychic Powers, and fits the Personality Powers bill after she dies. She has the opposite personality before then, however.
- Sburb players with the Heart aspect turn out to have this powerset. Special mention to Dirk, the Prince of Heart, which basically equates to "Destroyer of Soul", has the power to tear out people's souls, which is first shown failing against Aranea, and later seen used successfully against Caliborn, Arquiusprite, and half of Gamzee to seal their souls inside of Lil Cal during Caliborn's Masterpiece. It's said they possesses the ability to destroy them outright, but only the removal is shown.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent's version of The Plague affects both the body and the soul. In rare cases, infected Finnish mages are known to become Kade, who spread a variant of The Plague that targets the soul to the point that it can infect mages who are otherwise The Immune in regards to the "standard" version of the disease.
- In The Story of Anima, this is one of the many theories as to what exactly the titular Anima power really is.
- Unsounded:
- To create artificial intelegence for pymarics wrights sound ghosts, which are memory fragments and parts of human souls, from the khert which have elements similar to the personality they want to create.
- Sette can command ghosts, but she cannot command positive ghosts when she has not positive feelings herself. She can also physically rip them out of First Materials.
- In What's Shakin', Pai uses spirit magic, which draws from the powers of creatures in the spirit world.
Websites
- The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids: One of the aspects of Emperor Steer's powers, although he has many others. His supernatural hold over his subjects is voiced as his being "the Sovereign of the Souls", although quite how this works has yet to be revealed; he was also revealed in The Time of the Toymaker to have the ability to tear off part of his own soul and use it to grant sentience to inanimate objects, although this evidently comes at a price.
Western Animation
- Avatar Legends:
- In the original Avatar: The Last Airbender series, Aang learns to do this in the form of Energybending. He uses it in the final battle to remove Ozai's Firebending, rendering him harmless, though doing so posed a major risk since Aang could have been corrupted and destroyed himself if his own spirit was imblanaced. During the act, Aang and Ozai are both covered in blue and orange light respectively, with Ozai's light attempting to engulf Aang. Word of God states this is literally their souls turning inside out, with Ozai's evil energy being "so bad" that it threatened to destroy Aang on the spot until his own spirit fought back.
- Spiritbending is explicitly a sub-power of Waterbending in The Legend of Korra, and can be used to heal/rebalance or dissipate dark spirits corrupted by Vaatu. A damaging version exists which can actually do the opposite, potentially destroying a victim's soul by introducing an imbalance instead. An unrelated Airbending move allows one to physically detach their spirit and astral project, which Jinora uses several times to scout areas, similar to Korra's astral projection using Energybending. Later in the series, Kuvira builds a giant cannon that harnesses spirit vines to fire a beam of pure spiritual energy which can level mountains. In the final battle, Korra learns how to bend this pure spiritual energy beam out of the way to save Kuvira's life (apparently using Energybending), which according to Word of God is Korra's ultimate triumph and culmination of her long spiritual journey throughout the series.
- In the Blackstar episode "The Zombie Masters", the villain Shaldemar uses this in conjunction with a Soul Jar to turn people into zombies.
- The Dragon Prince: This is how dark magic is cast. Since Viren's a virtuoso at it, he is able to capture people's (or at least, elves') souls in gold coins.
- KPop Demon Hunters: Humans have magically powerful souls, but only Hunters or people who have made a Deal with the Devil can actively use that power. Which is a good thing, because using too much of it can destroy you and/or poke holes in the "Honmoon"- the community-powered wall protecting Earth from demonic invasion.
- Hunters sing to increase listeners' soul energy and siphon off the excess to power the Honmoon. They can also conjure solid weapons from their own souls (and souls directly gifted to them by a dying demon), as well as weave Honmoons into existence.
- Demons can suck out souls, move them around, and/or eat them to gain power. They run the risk of being devoured by the demon king Gwi-ma and must ration their magic to avoid losing themselves completely. A demon that is about to die physically but hasn't run out of magic can combine their soul with that of a living person, boosting the latter's power significantly. Jinu uses this to help Rumi strike back at the guy who killed him.
- The Nightsisters of Dathomir in Star Wars: The Clone Wars have a cult-like society connected to spirits and their ancestors. They believe in strong family ties, to the point of communing with souls of the long departed. Even the living aren't safe from their power (as Dooku quickly learns). Mother Talzin and Daka were particularly gifted in manipulating the soul, able to summon Zombies, inflict curses and even cure insanity.