Book Review – The Beginner’s Guide to The Akashic Records: Understanding Your Soul’s History and How to Read It by Whitney Jefferson Evans
Book Review
The Beginner’s Guide to The Akashic Records
Understanding Your Soul’s History
and How to Read It
by Whitney Jefferson Evans
Publisher: Adams Media
208 pages
Publication Date: 1/12/2021
Imagine being able to open a file to find all your past and future selves– to learn from and discover “your true purpose in life.” These are the Akashic Records that Whitney Jefferson Evans writes about in The Beginner’s Guide to the Akashic Records: Understanding Your Soul’s History and How to Read It. According to Jefferson Evans, a Reiki Master and Deputy Editorial Director and Director of Pop Culture at BuzzFeed, “the Akashic Records are an energetic, vibrational record of everything that has ever happened in the past, present and future.”
The purpose of attaining these records are to “heal issues in your current lifetime…and advance yourself spiritually.” However, as with anything this important, they are not easily accessible. Located on the astral plane they can be reached by meditation or “any kind of hypnotic or trance-like state” and only with practice if you plan on reaching them yourself. The author tells us that your records are only available to you, however with permission, you can have a professional access them for you as the author did, for her first time, while on assignment at a Gwyneth Paltrow “goop Summit.”
Using her perky cheerleader voice, Jefferson Evans guides the reader through the four parts of this work. In Part One: Getting Ready, she gives an etymology along with a definition and purpose of the Akashic records. Also included is a brief history of where the records have been mentioned—ranging from The Bible to nineteenth century philosophers Helen Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner to modern day media like Charmed and Black Panther. From here she leads you through setting space, chakras, clearing energy, protection and soul’s purpose.
Part Two: Getting Yourself Ready, is just that—clearing time and space as well as mind while you set your intentions.
Part Three: Maximizing Your Spiritual Connections brings the reader to improve their “clairs” such as clairvoyance and clairaudience among others. A deeper explanation of Chakras and the astral plane appears, along with working with spirit guides.
Part Four: Accessing the Akashic Records, finally we get here where the author further describes ways to access the records, using meditation, hypnosis, sounds and also professionals to help. From here the author delves into what you may or may not see on the astral plane including spirit guards of the records. She also offers suggestions on how to decide what questions to ask and the myriad ways your answers may be received. Included here is even a trouble shooting chapter if one is unable to make it to the records or get no answers.
While Jefferson Evans is obviously sincere, and there is some good information here, this work has some problems that keep it from becoming a fully satisfying volume. First, this is more a pop-culture than a pagan book, hence the movie and TV references. Being mentioned on Charmed doesn’t make one take this as seriously as it should. Also there seems to be some odd shortcuts– for instance when instructing on meditation, all steps are thoroughly explained right down to “wear comfy clothing,” while when guided meditations are mentioned, the reader is referred to YouTube to find one. There are none in the book. The author does give tips on how to find some audio recordings “designed for Akashic records” but there are no specific recommendations, leaving the reader slogging through the internet. This is problematic as it eliminates an effective way for some who are interested in the Akashic records to access them. There still are people who don’t have access to internet or are not computer literate. Also, it would have been beneficial to have a little more background given on the records especially the concept of the “fifth element or Aether.” While in some instances there seemed to not be enough background in other instances some of the information was redundant.
Though touted as a “beginner’s guide,” this work felt as if it could have been so much more. Instead of a fully rendered effort we seem to have gotten Akashic Records lite.
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About the Author:
Raye Snover is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Daily News and The Village Sun. She was also co-editor of The Temple Bell –the newsletter for The Temple of Witchcraft
Having been a witch for over twenty years, Ms. Snover is a High Priestess in the Cabot Tradition and a member of The Sisterhood of Avalon. She is also a Veriditas trained Labyrinth facilitator, and lives in New York City.
