For 500 years the State Oracle of Tibet has worked as a kind of angry immortal advisor to the Dalai Lama, a Tibetan hybrid of Dominic Cummings and John Dee. The current incumbent, like all previous ones, alternates between his human incarnation and his spirit version. ‘In Tibetan Buddhism, the unseen parallel world of spirits is not to be taken lightly,’ explains anthropologist David Sneath on Heart and Soul (BBC World Service). ‘There are so many other living species,’ the Minister of Religion and Culture tells Sneath, ‘many of which we don’t even see.’
Sneath interviews the cheerful sixty-something State Oracle (living in exile in Dharamsala), various government ministers, sincere religious leaders and younger Tibetan activists who see consulting oracles as embarrassingly dated. In the era of pocket black mirrors, mysterious algorithms and new spirits with names like ‘Google’, ‘Instagram’ and ‘Netflix’, consulting a State Oracle might seem a little like keeping a jester around for old times’ sake, but the previous one did, in fact, prove useful to the Dalai Lama, prophesying the invasion of China in 1950 — even drawing his holiness an escape map.
The Oracle accurately prophesied the Chinese invasion in 1950 and even drew the Dalai Lama an escape map
Sneath’s thoughtful, atmospheric broadcast conjures a world where politics, spirits and history are inseparable.
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