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Resumo

Oracles and shamans are ambivalent figures, for both members of their own societies and outside observers confronted with their extraordinary status and behavior. Ethnographic narratives dating from the earliest periods of European contact onward suggest that interaction with Tibetan oracles has often evoked departures from 'ordinary' consciousness which are no less remarkable in foreign observers than in the oracle himself and his Tibetan assistants and audience. Thus, processes of interaction, ethnographic observation, and professional communication require consideration in this study. Trance induction in the Tibetan State Oracle is a complex, multimedia process that resists unitary explanation by widely‐used anthropological theories of trance, or even within the Oracle's own tradition, where the existence of multiple interpretations is considered normal. Moreover, with the Oracle's experiences traditionally conceived as being inaccessible at one level to observers, and at another level even to the Oracle himself, the results of any given induction remain problematic for cultural insiders as well as foreign ethnographers. For Tibetan participants, the 'consciousness' of the Oracle's trance is constructed as an interactive process rather than an individual state; and ethnographers, too, become involved in this interactive process of constructing shifts of consciousness, in both their participant‐observation in the field and their participation in processes of communication to professional audiences. The range and effects of these interactions are explored through a theoretical stance that treats culture as configurations of flowing and changing energies, and juxtaposes metaphors of the Oracle's mirror and a video recording, which latter was made at the Oracle's request and is used here to provide images for visualizing the interactions discussed in the text.

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