Having now spent a fair amount of time reviewing the oracle, I can't help but think that its foci (or what will hopefully be called "mysteries") and their loose associations with the Golarion pantheon limits the player's ability to use the oracle in other campaign settings. I understand that oracles revere abstractions of divinity as opposed to specific gods, and while I realize of course that Paizo isn't really able to make executive decisions regarding what focus is connected to which patron deitiy of campain setting x, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't be better that the oracle's foci (mysteries) should be somehow linked to those of the Pathfinder RPG domains?
Domains might be considered a straight jacket of sorts by some players, but if it meant retaining a semblance of lateral compatibility with existing 3.5 products and campaign settings, I think that most people would be all for it. Paizo certainly has every right to tie in to their own products, but with most other 3.5 settings being out of print, I don't think it would hurt their sales at all to include information that makes the oracle a little more universal.
If the abundance of the domains would prove too much of undertaking, a nice alternative would be to present a sidebar or something that linked oracle foci to the Pathfinder RPG domains, so that players wishing to use oracles outside of Golarion would have an impartial, not-house-ruled system by which they could tie-in their character's focus (or foci) to members of whatever pantheon they're playing with.
If deities are really not even an issue for the oracle, then that needs to be articulated more definitively. Oracles need to be distanced from gods as much as possible then so that the idea of foci being even remotely related to domains is excised.
Thoughts?
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I'm leaning in the other direction, it seems.
Almost every campaign setting has a god(dess) of love and beauty, but they get stuck with the Charm domain, which is kinda/sorta relevant, but not a perfect fit. Plenty of fate and destiny and judgement gods, but Knowledge and Luck and Law aren't perfect fits for them either. Nature gods get saddled with some combination of Animal, Plant and / or Weather (and sometimes other elements, or Travel), but there is no one 'nature' Domain. A Nature Mystery/Foci, on the other hand, seems eminently do-able, not specifically plant, nor animal, nor weather.
Golarion is filled with appropriate Mystery/Foci fodder. Abadar is god of cities, wealth, merchants and law, with means, of all the core Domains, Law is the only one that's actually *specific* to his areas of concern. An Urban Mystery/Foci could go nicely here, and be relevant to various other dieties of civilization. Similarly, a Mystery/Foci dealing with Trade/Wealth/Greed/Merchants could be relevant to Abadar (Golarion), Waukeen (the Realms), Mouqual (Greyhawk), etc.
Mysteries/Foci could end up filling in the many holes left behind where Domains get shoved in willy-nilly that have little or nothing to do with the diety in question. (Such as, what does Urgathoa, goddess of disease, gluttony and undeath have to do with Strength or War? A Mystery or Foci of Contagion, which could also be combined with Poisons and / or Curses, would make sense, and be useful for a Realms Oracle of Myrkul or Talona, or a Greyhawk Oracle of Incabulos or Pyremius, or even, with the Curse aspect included, Beshaba or Ralishaz.)