While I’m on the subject of Dr Bob, the therapist who helps me expect the unexpected, I’m guessing that Agincourt has had at least one oracle (not to be confused with the business software company who appropriated the word, hoping, perhaps, that their product might be consulted in the same spirit). Most ancient world cultures and some contemporary ones have relied upon interpreters of wisdom, divine and otherwise, consulted when reason fails or conflicting opinions arise. And, while many oracles relied upon babbling incoherency or chemically altered states of consciousness, Glenn Beck is not a contemporary manifestation of oracular power. It’s like squares and rectangles: all squares are rectangles; not all rectangles are squares. Glenn Beck is merely a crackpot whose insights are mistaken for wisdom, which, contrarily, does not mean that he cannot speak wisely on occasion. The odds are just against it.

Agincourt will have had its oracular types, though they and those who listened to them may not have known it. Wisdom often works that way. So whether it was a bartender, owner of a general store, nurse, doctor or vagabond, I feel the need to invent one. My guess is that they were neither teacher nor clergy, folks whose community roles often put them in oracular posture.