The one who listens

in september a viper came to our front door in bali, right on the step between a friend and the house. i went looking for what it meant, the way you do. what i found was that i already knew. i had just been asking for a louder sign.

An oracle is a person, a place or a practice through which a sincere question is believed to receive an answer from beyond ordinary knowing. The word comes from the Latin oraculum, from orare, to speak or to pray, and Spanish still says orar. Across ancient Greece, China, India, Mexico and even The Matrix, the same three things repeat: a question asked with care, a threshold of silence, heat or trance, and an answer that the one who asked still has to interpret. An oracle rarely tells you what to do. She hands the question back to you, clearer.

We named our newest collection the Oracle, and I wanted to understand the word properly before I asked you to wear it. This is what I found, culture by culture, and what it has to do with an ordinary Tuesday.

What does the word oracle mean?

An oracle can be three different things, and most traditions use all three. It can be a person, the priestess or medium who receives the answer. It can be a place, the temple or shrine where people travel to ask. And it can be the answer itself, the words that come back.

Underneath all of them is the root. Orare means to speak, and it also means to pray. An oracle sits exactly where speaking and praying meet: a question spoken aloud to something larger, and a willingness to be quiet long enough for an answer.

Who was the Oracle of Delphi?

The most famous oracle in the Western world was the Pythia, the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in central Greece. She was consulted for more than a thousand years, from at least the eighth century BCE until the temple was closed in the late fourth century CE. Kings and ordinary people alike made the climb, and for much of that history she could only be consulted on one day each month.

Her answers were famously ambiguous and often needed the temple priests to interpret them. And carved into the forecourt of the temple, where every visitor passed before asking anything, were two words in Greek: know thyself.

What are oracle bones?

In China during the late Shang dynasty, roughly 1250 to 1050 BCE, questions were put to the ancestors using oracle bones, prepared ox shoulder blades and turtle shells. A hot rod was pressed against the bone until it cracked, and the diviner read the answer in the shape of the crack. The questions were practical: the weather, the harvest, a birth, a battle.

The answers were then carved into the bone itself. Around 13,000 inscribed pieces survive, and those carvings are the earliest substantial body of Chinese writing we have. A people asked the oracle for guidance, and in recording what they heard, they wrote their language into being.

The Oracle Gown and the Oracle Playsuit, in Moon Milk linen.

Are there oracles in India?

There are, and they are living traditions rather than museum pieces. In the Bhagavathi temples of Kerala, the velichappadu, a name that means the revealer of light, enters trance during ritual dance, dressed in red with a hooked sword and ankle bells, and answers the questions devotees bring. Both women and men hold the role, often within the same families for generations.

And in Dharamsala, in the Indian Himalaya, lives the Nechung Oracle, the state oracle of the Tibetan government in exile, who has advised the Dalai Lamas for centuries. The ceremonial costume worn in trance weighs over seventy pounds, with a headdress of around thirty. The medium is called the kuten, which means the physical basis. The oracle is not the person. The person is the ground the answer arrives on.

I love that word. I think most of us are a kuten for something, if we are still enough.

What does the oracle mean in Mexican tradition?

I carry Mexican roots, and in Mexico the oracle has always had more to do with time and with mirrors than with temples.

The Mexica, whom many of us learned to call the Aztecs, kept a sacred 260-day count called the tonalpohualli, twenty day signs woven with thirteen numbers. A child was named for the day they were born, and that day was read for their character and path. Marriages were weighed by the compatibility of two people's days.

They also read mirrors. Polished obsidian was used for scrying across Mesoamerica, and a still bowl of water could serve the same purpose. One of the most powerful Mexica deities, Tezcatlipoca, has a name that means smoking mirror. An obsidian mirror from Mexico even ended up in the collection of John Dee, the court astrologer to Elizabeth I, and it sits in the British Museum today. The Huichol people of Nayarit still use mirrors in ceremony, as doorways to the ancestors.

What strikes me is the mirror itself. You do not look into an obsidian mirror to see someone else. You see yourself, darker and quieter, and you have to stay long enough for it to show you something new.

Who is the Oracle in The Matrix?

For a whole generation, the first oracle we ever met was not in a temple at all. In The Matrix, released in 1999, the Oracle is an older woman played by Gloria Foster, and she receives Neo in an ordinary apartment kitchen while a tray of cookies bakes. Above her kitchen door hangs a small plaque in Latin: temet nosce. Know thyself. It is Delphi, carried into a kitchen.

She tells Neo not to worry about the vase, and he turns and knocks it over. Would he have broken it if she had said nothing? She tells him he is not the One. And the rest of the story is Neo discovering that no one could have told him who he was. He had to choose it.

That is the most honest description of an oracle I know. She said exactly what he needed to hear in order to find the answer himself.

How do oracles compare across cultures?

What do all oracles have in common?

Listening. Every tradition above builds a pause into the asking, a climb, a fire, a trance, a mirror, a kitchen chair. And almost every one returns the responsibility to the person who asked. The Pythia spoke in riddles you had to live your way into. The obsidian mirror showed you your own face. The Oracle in the kitchen told Neo something that only became true when he decided it.

That is why we called the collection the Oracle. An oracle does not speak first. She listens, and the room goes quiet around her. The pieces are cut in Moon Milk linen, the colour of milk left out under a full moon, with a high Japanese inspired neckline where restraint is the ornament. They are clothes for the woman who has stopped explaining herself. You can see the whole Oracle Collection here.

Frequently asked questions

What is an oracle?

An oracle is a person, place or practice through which a question is believed to receive an answer from a source beyond ordinary knowledge, such as a deity, the ancestors or the deeper self. The word comes from the Latin oraculum, from orare, meaning to speak or to pray.

What does oracle mean spiritually?

Spiritually, an oracle is a threshold between a question and a deeper knowing. Across traditions it involves a sincere question, a pause of silence, ritual or trance, and an answer the seeker must interpret. Most oracles return responsibility to the person asking rather than dictating what to do.

Who was the Oracle of Delphi?

The Oracle of Delphi was the Pythia, the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece. She was consulted for over a thousand years, until the late fourth century CE. The maxim know thyself was inscribed in the temple forecourt.

What does the Oracle represent in The Matrix?

In The Matrix, the Oracle represents self-knowledge and choice. She lives in an ordinary kitchen beneath a sign reading temet nosce, Latin for know thyself, and she tells Neo what he needs to hear so that he can discover and choose his own path.

What are oracle bones?

Oracle bones are ox shoulder blades and turtle shells used for divination in late Shang dynasty China, around 1250 to 1050 BCE. Heat was applied until they cracked, the cracks were read as answers, and the results were carved into the bone. They hold the earliest substantial body of Chinese writing.

Is an oracle the same as a psychic?

Not quite. A psychic is an individual who claims personal intuitive ability. An oracle is usually a role within a tradition, a medium, temple or practice through which answers are sought, and it often includes ritual, community and a lineage around it.

With love from Bali,
Myrah