Anarchy is our Path Home. Thoughts on Paganism, Shamanism and Spirits from the Edge of the World by J. Van. Ysslestyne.

Reading Spirits from the Edge of the World by J. Van. Ysslestyne is an eye-opening anthropological revealing of authentic shamanism.
Unlike many examinations from western writers, this book is mostly compiled by the Ulchi people themselves. As one of the few remaining cultures with living links back to their ancient lineages we should listen carefully to what they have to tell us.

Their animism (Itself a western term) is primal, of course, but also holistic and connective in a way we often overlook. Indeed, sometimes we are under pressure to label or not label, categorise and separate, define and ritualise, all of which, while well meaning, only result in order, dogma and an unnatural barrier to what 'shamanism' really is.
Shamanism in the Ulchi context, and for those of us in the west to a more crude degree, is an overview and umbrella term for what might be a multitude of paths, methods of contact and connection to what I call the 'whatever'.



The archonistic concept of priesthoods, initiations and trials (And any obstacle which imposes a collective power based definition over actual gnosis) when it comes to shamanism are really a false template of protestant work ethic and Catholic guilt concerning pain before revelation.
Eliade was only working from the sources available to him, of course, but these distortions have irrevocably damaged how we see our own spiritual inheritance, in my view.
In his book, The Triumph of the Moon, Professor Ronald Hutton writes of the 19th century deformation of indigenous spiritual beliefs and the frustration of anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor, "...the assertion that a large number of traditional peoples had no religion was made by people who habitually excluded from the category of religion anything that did not approximate to Christianity."


Work and pain are of course part of life but not when they are falsely inserted as opposed to being part of an individual pathway and spiritual journey.
This really is the heart of the problem when it comes to Paganism and our many interpretations of 'shamanism' today.


In the Ulchi culture anyone might become a shaman to some degree. Indeed, it is hard to argue against this relationship to the 'whatever' being our natural state, ultimately.
For some powerful shaman, the calling, or the life change which instigates this, comes early. In these instances it is often traumatic, sometimes resulting in a near death experience.
This is the view of the shaman we romanticise and venerate in the Western world.
However, as the Ulchi describe, often a shaman may evolve to their calling through a more subtle life path. It may come about in old age. It may be something that arrives after the death of a spouse or in the moments when life becomes slower and during times of contemplation.
For many thinkers, natural shamanism is a song which is always there but it is only when we are able to listen that we follow the music ourselves.

Ulchi testimonies include Grandmother Linza Beldy who began her healing singing for other people at age fifty, following her husband's death. Sometimes she can find a lost part of a soul and reconcile it with its body.
Grandmother Dalika Kotkin is an Isachula. She sang her visions only after her husband died and passed his spirits on to her. Grandmother Dalika Kotkin's shamanic path was slow, even at her senior age.
Grandmother Ama Echa tells us that she had no ceremony or shamanic initiation. She only took "half of the shamans road" because of this.
Initiation should be a personal one to one encounter if one wishes to follow a specific shamanic path. Otherwise the song will manifest in it's own separate way.

Today, in Paganism there is a default position that a person must be initiated or align themselves to a particular outlook in order to be accepted as 'authentic'.
This is an ego-intrusion and damaging on the most basic human level.
It is the foe of a living and natural connection and in complete opposition to the practices of our remaining indigenous cultures whose definition of initiation is completely different.
Initiation in modern Paganism is the accepted substitute for personal gnosis.
(And, the Western problem with personal gnosis is that for some reason those experiencing it keep trying to apply it to others!)


Trying to track this imposition upon our natural state is quite complex but we can, at least, find a crude root which explains why this occurs in Western paganism and why civil rules and power structures infiltrate our inherited indigenous opportunities for gnosis.
As people began to move into cities and more complex structured societies there was a need for civil arranging and planning.

In Sumeria, for example, the rituals of once pastoral people became temple focused with priests in a more centralised role. As civil days became festivals and holy days there was an inevitable coming together of the power structures and the religious.

A template of dogma and correction moved from social obligation to religious obligation. A personal relationship to the 'whatever' became secondary to official prayer. And a class-structure of kings, queens, judges and the common folk imposed itself like a lens over the personal and, up to then, always evolving natural relationship between people and the 'whatever'.

Ultimately, the Ulchi view of their spirituality seems to fit into that of the French academic, Pierre Chuvin, who asked us to re-evaluate how we understand the term, pagan, itself.
Chuvin suggests that this term should be applied to followers of older religious traditions: the rooted, indigenous spirituality that we are connected to whether we accept it or not.
'Whatever' that turns out to be. 

David Halpin.


Purchase Spirits from the Edge of the World here.