I know that they are meant to be the thing that gives the Oracle their power, but why, what are they in the world, how does the Oracle access them etc.. It doesn't seem very clear what they mean for the Oracle. The name would imply that the Oracle is a divine philosopher, and the gods don't like people being too nosy, but that doesn't seem to be it. Could someone explain it, if there is a single answeanswer that warrants the existence of a class based on it.
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We had a similar discussion a few weeks ago in What actually is an Oracle. The descriptions in the playtest document give three separate descriptions of a mystery.
1) The mystery is a divine power source beyond the gods.
2) The mystery is a cloud of divine magic that forms around several gods that follow similar ideals, but their different philosophies create internal conflicts inside the cloud.
3) The oracle has a strong devotion to an ideal and that lets him or her tap divine magic related to that ideal.
Divine philosopher seems to a good description of the PF2 oracle. This philosopher studied divine magic like a wizard studies arcane magic and therefore could reach out and tap one mystery. But not two mysteries. However, with wizards we have the concept of wizard academies where young wizards can study and learn the easy spells. We don't have oracle academies for young oracles and the notion learning the easy oracle spells first and studying more spells later does not seem to fit the theme. The oracle seems more like a person who logged into the gods' wifi network (gods don't use password protection) and can now download the premium channels on the divine internet because the gods subscribe to premium channels.
The Pathfinder gods don't seem to be deliberately punishing the oracle. In mythology divine ire typically involves being killed by lightning. Only the Greek gods liked to cast curses on people, and that was for merely offending the god's sense of propriety. Stealing from the Greek gods, like Prometheus did, involves being chained to a rock for eternity with an eagle eating one's liver. The Pathfinder oracular curse seems to be an unintentional contamination of the mystery.
I prefer a divine accident theory of oracle power. A battle oracle had an ecstatic experience during a tribal war dance and touched the divine domain of Zeal. A novice cleric of Shelyn when casting Heal somehow opened a permanent link to the divine domain of Healing. A person attacked by a summoned fire elemental mysteriously absorbed power from it to reach the divine domain of Fire. But this is not in the playtest document.
The Pathfinder gods don't seem to be deliberately punishing the oracle. In mythology divine ire typically involves being killed by lightning. Only the Greek gods liked to cast curses on people, and that was for merely offending the god's sense of propriety. Stealing from the Greek gods, like Prometheus did, involves being chained to a rock for eternity with an eagle eating one's liver. The Pathfinder oracular curse seems to be an unintentional contamination of the mystery.
I've always preferred the example of Celeste out of the fiction: An astrologer who took it very seriously, and ended up touched by Desna with unasked-for powers for an unknown reason, in a way that came across as very expression of her soul's passion via the Heavens Mystery. Tongues was an interesting Curse for her, and I always felt it was a subconscious way of expressing that she knew her love did NOT want her to be in any "run of the mill" combats, and she hated distressing him in that fashion.
That's really the Oracle in a nutshell: Brushed by the Powers That Be and made unique in the process, with powers unasked for and a burden eternal.