Raven Kaldera and Northern Tradition Shamanism

Northern Tradition Shamanism is a contemporary path of spirit work rooted in the cosmological framework of Norse and Germanic heathenry. It is distinct from Asatru and other reconstructionist heathen paths primarily in its emphasis on direct spirit contact, trance-based practice, healing work, and the vocation of the spirit-worker, sometimes called a shaman in this context, though that word carries contested meanings. The tradition as a coherent modern practice was shaped substantially by the prolific writings and personal practice of Raven Kaldera, whose many books gave this approach a systematic form it had not previously had.

The cosmological grounding of Northern Tradition Shamanism is the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology as described in the Eddas and explored through direct visionary experience. Practitioners work with the world tree Yggdrasil as a map of reality, understanding the different realms and their inhabitants as spiritually present and accessible to those who learn to move between them. The Norse pantheon, particularly Odin (a god of wisdom, magic, and death associated with shamanic practice), Freya (associated with seidr and magic), and Hela (goddess of the dead), are central figures in many practitioners’ work, alongside the wights, disir, and ancestors that populate the northern-tradition spirit world.

History and origins

The historical seidr practice referenced in sources such as the Poetic and Prose Eddas and the Icelandic sagas was performed by specialist practitioners called volva (singular) or seidhkona. The sagas describe these women traveling with a retinue, conducting formal prophecy sessions in which they entered trance states and answered questions about the future, fate, and conditions. Odin himself is described as having learned seidr from Freya, an association that in the saga world had gender and social implications, since seidr was primarily a female practice and its performance by a man was considered socially transgressive.

Academic scholarship on seidr, including the work of anthropologist Neil Price in The Viking Way (2002, substantially expanded 2019), has substantially advanced understanding of what the historical practice may have involved, drawing on archaeological evidence as well as textual sources. Price’s work suggests that seidr was part of a broader complex of shamanistic practice in Viking-age Scandinavia with structural parallels to Siberian and Sami shamanism.

The modern reconstruction of seidr as a spiritual practice developed during the 1990s alongside the broader growth of heathenry in North America. Diana Paxson’s work with oracular seidr in the Hrafnar kindred in California established one model for contemporary practice, and her approach involved extended experimental work to reconstruct what a practical modern version of the described ritual might look like. Kaldera’s Northern Tradition Shamanism developed as a somewhat different approach, more explicitly oriented toward the spirit-worker vocation in its totality rather than specifically oracular seidr, and more willing to draw on anthropological and cross-cultural shamanistic frameworks alongside the Norse sources.

Core beliefs and practices

The central model in Northern Tradition Shamanism is that certain people are called by the spirits, often through crisis, illness, or repeated spiritual encounter, to serve as intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds. This calling is not chosen voluntarily in the conventional sense; it comes from the spirits themselves and typically brings both gifts and heavy responsibilities. The practitioner learns over time to work in the Nine Worlds, to communicate with ancestors, wights, gods, and other beings, to perform healing by retrieving lost parts of the soul or addressing spiritual causes of physical and psychological difficulty, and to perform oracular work by bringing through information from the spirit world.

Practical techniques include deep trance induction through drumming, breathwork, or the sung repetitive vocalizing called seidhjallr, pathworking in the Nine Worlds through active visualization, and working with a personal set of spirit allies developed over time through relationship and reciprocity. Ancestor work and the maintenance of relationships with the disir (feminine ancestral spirits) and alfar (spirits of the land and of certain of the dead) form an ongoing foundation of practice.

Open or closed

Northern Tradition Shamanism as Kaldera and associated teachers present it is not a closed tradition in the initiatory sense; Kaldera’s many books are explicitly intended to make the framework and techniques available to readers. However, the tradition maintains that the spirit-worker path is called rather than chosen, and that genuine shamanic work develops through a lived relationship with the spirits rather than through technique acquisition alone. Practitioners are expected to work seriously with the Norse cosmology and with actual northern-tradition spirits rather than treating the framework as interchangeable with other shamanistic traditions.

How to begin

Kaldera’s foundational texts, including Wightridden: Paths of Northern-Tradition Shamanism and the Pathwalker series (co-authored with Galina Krasskova and others), are the primary entry points to this tradition in written form. Diana Paxson’s The Way of the Oracle addresses oracular seidr specifically. Engaging with the primary sources (the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and relevant sagas) in reliable translations provides the cosmological grounding that makes specific techniques meaningful rather than free-floating.

Working carefully with ancestor relationships and with the spirits of your local land is a foundation that Northern Tradition Shamanism shares with many other spirit-worker paths, and it is a starting point that requires no special knowledge, only consistent attention and genuine respect.

In myth and popular culture

The historical seidr practitioner, traveling from community to community with a retinue and conducting formal prophecy sessions, is depicted in a memorable scene in the Icelandic saga Eirik the Red’s Saga (Eiriks saga rauða), where a völva named Thorbjorg Little Völva is described arriving at a Greenland farm in full ceremonial dress to perform an oracular session. This account gives one of the most detailed descriptions of a historical shamanistic ceremony in any Old Norse source and has become a touchstone for contemporary Northern Tradition practitioners attempting to understand what the original practice may have looked like.

The broader literary tradition of the Norse seerer, the figure who stands at the boundary of the living world and the spirit world, appears throughout the Eddas. The Voluspa, the most important poem in the Poetic Edda, is delivered in the voice of a völva summoned from death by Odin to reveal the history and fate of the cosmos. She is not a gentle figure; she speaks with authority, withholds some of what she knows, and cannot be compelled to say more than she chooses.

In contemporary popular culture, the combination of Norse aesthetics with shamanic practice appears in video games such as “God of War” (2018), which features a völva character and depicts Odin’s Ravens and shamanic cosmology in visually striking form, though substantially reimagined for dramatic purposes. The accuracy of these portrayals varies significantly, and Reconstructionist and Northern Tradition practitioners routinely note the discrepancies with the source material.

Myths and facts

Northern Tradition Shamanism is a relatively specialized path and consequently attracts some misunderstanding, both from those outside it and from newer practitioners.

• A common belief holds that Northern Tradition Shamanism is simply the same as Asatru with drumming added. The two paths differ significantly in emphasis: Asatru centers on honoring the gods through ritual, ethics, and community; Northern Tradition Shamanism centers on the vocation of the spirit-worker, whose primary relationship is with the spirit world rather than with community religious observance.
• Some practitioners assume that seidr as practiced today is a continuous, unbroken tradition from the Viking Age. The modern practice is a reconstruction and reimagining based on fragmentary historical sources, not a lineage transmitted without interruption through the Christian period.
• It is sometimes assumed that anyone can become a Northern Tradition shaman through study and technique. Raven Kaldera and most teachers in this tradition are explicit that the spirit-worker calling comes from the spirits rather than from personal ambition, and that the path typically involves experiences of crisis and ordeal rather than voluntary enrollment.
• The historical seidr practice was associated primarily with women in the sources, and male practitioners were subject to a specific social stigma (ergi). Northern Tradition practitioners acknowledge this complexity; some work with it as spiritually significant, others do not.
• Northern Tradition Shamanism is sometimes confused with core shamanism as developed by Michael Harner. The two share drumming technique and some vocabulary, but Northern Tradition Shamanism is specifically grounded in Norse cosmology and the spirits of that tradition, not in a generalized cross-cultural framework.