A mage's ultimate goal, you see, is to reach the 'maelstrom of origins'. It's also called the Akashic Record, but it may be better to just regard the edge of the maelstrom as having such properties attached to it.
The thing called the maelstrom of origins, it is probably the birthplace of everything. All phenomena flow out from it. If you know the origin, the results are naturally produced. To describe it as it is, you could say that it is the 'perfect knowledge'. By creating a standard like perfection or the like, we are ultimately limiting the concept, so even that description is incorrect. But since that the easiest way of defining it, the name stuck.
Essentially, all the branches of magic that have spread throughout this world are nothing more than one branch of a small river flowing out from this maelstrom. This is the reason that every country has their own traditions and legends. The core is the same, but what decorates the exterior is the background of the one who understood that 'river'. Astrology, alchemy, kabbala, spiritualism, rune, the innumerable researchers. Their origins are the same, so in the end they hold the same final destination in mind. Because, they who have touched the tip of the stream that split off from the maelstrom of origins called magic, they have imagined what lay before --- the shape of the beginning.