woman standing in front of glowing portals (Photo by iStock/gremlin)  

Sometimes we encounter people who seem to live in the gap between worlds. Their bodies are more transparent—diaphanous, flickering in the liminal fascia between many planes of reality. They see and fall in love with unimaginable potential. They try to whisper to us about it, even if we don’t understand. They are faithful to a different kind of clarity and integrity. When they communicate through silence, strange riddles, and koans, it is with gravity and potency that stirs something deep: a remembrance of the future.

Practices for Transitions in a Time Between Worlds

There is no manual for living through our wildly unpredictable times. How do we imagine, prepare for, and shape an unknown future? Who do we need to be or become? Instead of a road map, we offer this supplement to illuminate inquiries, capacities, and practices that we believe can open consequential new pathways to a better tomorrow. Sponsored by Joseph Rowntree Foundation

To be an oracular being is:

To open your soul-body to the gap; to become a porous channel of temporal streams and currents.

To encounter latent potential; to beckon and connect with furtive futures that impregnate you with vision.

To utter from that unspeakable place of paradox; to declare your visions to the world, transforming your body into a portal of potential.

Oracular beings are profoundly sensitive and porous, weird and wise. But today, there is a demand for oracular beings to enter the public sphere to become guides to this time between worlds, and to assume postures of “visionary leadership” for collective metamorphosis. These oracular beings step up, even when they prefer to be dancing at the edges of the forest. The public gaze can be hard on these bodies. It is a costume that binds them to expectations and projections. Yet these beings work hard, devoting their spirit, soul, sweat, blood, and tears.

Oracular Bodies began as a research/art project exploring the phenomenology of these senseful beings who can be considered visionaries, shamans, mystics, oracles, or prophets in this time between worlds. Historically, an oracle has been someone gifted with clear senses and the capacity to speak and provide visionary insight, counsel, and prophecy. In times desperate for guidance and foresight, oracular beings are being called to become beacons to heal, inspire, and guide others through collective transition.

It is work that arises from tender love and fierce guardianship of the oracular beings in our lives. We want to source the infrastructures of care for oracular beings and protect the intergenerational transmission of this emerging yet ancient capacity. We want to prefigure the vital patterns of oracular culture, a future that sees and provides for a collective capacity that must not be limited to a burdened few. It embodies a living hypothesis that humans are innately porous and interconnected creatures in our radical responsiveness to other living beings and a living world. Oracular bodies help us remember the intimacy that is our collective birthright.

This work is used to design programs that can support these oracular beings and offer practices of transition, a different kind of foresight—a foreseeing that can only come from these particular bodies.

Read more stories by Cheryl Hsu.