The Brutal Consequences of Mystifying Oracle

Sponsored by World of Warships! Register to receive 500 doubloons, 1.5 mil. credits, one port slot and 7 days premium time when you use code BRAVO and click here → wo.ws/40Z1w9D (Applicable to new users only)

Mystifying Oracle is just a story about what would happen if one of those "3AM" channels were to actually summon a ghost and/or demonic entity.

That spirit was so mad it stole all that man’s big boy furniture. Malevolent, indeed.

"My mom got pushed down the stairs... STAY TUNED!!!" Ah yeah. He hittin' the YouTube grindset already

not finished yet, so idk if you mentioned it, but joel's characterization feels like someone with depression. the oversleeping, apathy, disregard for his own safety, the obvious when it comes to bleeding, and at the end, that isolation, though it's not his purposeful choice, comes about as a result of his own actions. i think it's easy to read this series as a metaphor for depression, feeling like you're haunted and everything going wrong, the isolation no matter how much people reach out. the way chloe talks to him reminds me of someone trying to support a friend with chronic depression. maybe it's because i'm having a flareup, but it stuck out to me as neat. heck, even the purposeful pushing of the spirit can be seen as self-harm or reckless activities, things you see in people who are passively in a headspace of craving self-deletion. and the stepping out at the end is a fairly obvious reference to said self-deletion. but i don't know, and i really love your breakdown of the series! :D

imagine if he died, gonna be an awkward meetup in the afterlife with that spirit

Mandela is by far my favorite Analog Horror but Mystifying Oracle is really a breath of fresh air. The commitment to the style of "early 2000s/windows movie maker" YT videos makes the series feel really authentic. Reminds me of watching those old spooky YouTube videos like username666.

16:15 demon pulled a 'no you' on his ass 😂

most violent "no you" ive seen ever

What immediately threw me off was the candles having such round shadows. That and the “no, you” gave me a chuckle.

I worked at Spirit Halloween and we used to sell Ouija Boards but at my specific location we had to stop selling them because people would try to use them in our store because the mall where we were located was on top of a Native American burial ground. Fun times.

TLDR: Demon bullies depressed youtuber for milking content

One thing to keep in mind is that those who believe in Ouija boards have two rules that are believed to be necessary: you need to open every session with a prayer to repel malevolent spirits and make sure the spirits you're speaking with will be good spirits, and you always always ALWAYS end every session by saying goodbye to dismiss the spirit so that you're not keeping a spirit around. Otherwise, you're opening the door for any spirits to communicate with you and stick around when you're done, regardless of their moral alignment. Joel clearly did not do either of these, so yeah. Dude was asking for it.

The thing I find strange is, why doesn't the ouija board still have the blood on it in episode 3? You could argue that he maybe washed it but depending on what material those old boards are made out of there must've still been at least a stain, right?

I love seeing “smaller” channels start getting sponsorships. It’s nice to see someone like Minaxa, a grain of sand in a desert of YouTubers, get recognized and paid by a brand! … … Nuts from Berk

Mystifying oracle is literally so special to me along with TMC. Somehow all of Alex’s work strikes a really great chord with me, but MO has that nostalgia factor. I used to watch low quality, underground ghost videos like that when I was a kid.

It really does seem like the rationality of a severely depressed person working through their understanding of self harm and how it appears to help them and even get them attention, despite overall distancing them from their support group. I believe the intent here is to be more metaphorical in story telling than a literal telling of a haunting. Not sure though! But if it’s meant to be literal it seems a little cliche and disrespectfully handled as self harm just for the sake of showing a ghosts power is a tad tone deaf.

The simple nature and more isolated event happening here really works. I miss older supernatural stories wherein spirits just clapped back because they got mad, instead of some Avengers level demon wants to destroy the world or something. It feels a lot more personal this way, and I applaud Alex Kister for going for this style of story.

FUN FACT! both the mystifying oracle and Mandela catalog exist in the same universe...... (if you watched Vol 4......something may stick out when you know this fact)

@19:53–The painting featured on the wall here is a detail from Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin, a painted altarpiece. It depicts the torture of souls by a demon & the comfort of those souls by angels. It’s understood as a depiction of purgatory. Looking at Kister’s most recent work as a small, shallow slice of La Divina Commedia (Dante) clarifies it almost completely. First: I don’t find this recent work of Kister’s to be effective; I understand I’m in the minority on that—I also found his later installments of Mandela to be weaker each time, with only the first installment feeling like a tight, concrete, & polished product. Second: I don’t see how this series trivializes any serious topic of IPV or self-harm. His lack of concern around his mother’s wellbeing, even after she was pushed down the stairs, is the point—we are meant to be repulsed by his indifference. I only saw one person repeatedly comment this, but wanted to add my feelings on it in response. As for the “meaning” of this series—it is indeed vague; we are given enough to have a general idea. Joel is portrayed as a self-centered & obsessive person. You’re right to describe him as someone with little regard for himself or others, minaxa—I think his lack of regard for others is the more important trait to stress, here. Joel’s “self-harm” was not true self-harm, to my mind. Instead, I interpreted it as a blood offering. As Joel went looking for the haunted board, & displayed no hesitation in its unveiling—even with the warning—we can conclude he was all-in from the start. It’s easy to then assume that Joel intended to provoke the spirit, or use the spirit board to call upon something else. There is plenty of mythological literature about demon-summoning that involves blood offering or blood sacrifice. I believe Joel spilled blood on the board with the intent to summon, or the intent to provoke. The result we see the next day—of him having been transported somewhere between time & space—I believe was a direct result of his blood offering. This is one possible explanation for why—when Joel asks the spirit if it did this—the spirit says, “NO — YOU.” Meaning, “No, I didn’t. You did.” The spirit can either mean that Joel’s blood provoked this outcome or summoned something else. It can also mean that Joel’s actions prior to these events led to this outcome, as well. Did Joel do something irrevocable to land in his own state of purgatory/limbo? Was this the natural conclusion to his obsessive, self-centered behavior? Are there events that led up to this that we don’t know, but Joel knows? Or was Joel willing to enter into a bargain with something otherworldly/spiritual in order to prove the existence of it?—the price of his bargain being his life/soul? The entire series can also be a metaphor for a few things—the pursuit of online success & forfeiture of values/authentic self to achieve it; the spiral of mental illness (isolation; self-centeredness; obsession & compulsion); “you reap what you sow.” The final blip of scripture at the end from Matthew, which mentions paying back what is owed, really highlights the similarities to La Divina Commedia & establishes that, for me, this series is about Joel’s repayment of some debt. Whether that debt was incurred when he invoked the spirit; when he offered blood; or something he did before these events that we aren’t privy to, we don’t know. I think it’s very clear, though, that Joel had his own journey through purgatory.