I suspect that Roderick is right and that HeroQuest will answer a lot f the outstanding questions. If you can't wait until then, and can'tafford to become a GTA Hero, then some of the Unspoken Word books might give more of a clue (thinking particularly of "Uz", because there are more animist-type cults in there).
That said (and bearing in mind that I am not a Hero), my current impression is similar to Peter's. The Tradition is what tells you which spirits you can deal with, and how (so it is possible that a particular tradition might get a bonus or penalty when dealing with a particualr type of spirit, or may be able to integrate one type of spirit but not another, and so on).
Your average "animist in the yurt" is mostly unaffected by this - if he wants a fetish for war he'll go and see the shaman of the local warrior tradition, and if he wants one for healing he'll go and see the shaman of the local healing tradition. Where non-shaman deal directly with spirits they may need to follow a tradition and thus get (some of) the benefits and drawbacks of the shaman.
Under the Hero Wars rules it is possible for a Shaman to learn to deal with a "non-tradition" spirit and make it part of their "personal" tradition - I expect that this will still be the case, though it may be hard/impossible to bring enemy or forbidden spirits into your tradition - or at least to do so and still be recognised as a member of that tradition... (so a StormBull Shaman who learns how to integrate Chaos Spirits is going to have a hard time convincing anyone he is still a Storm Bull, for instance - which apart from the physical consequences will mean that when he expects to be able to deal in 'the normal manner' with other Praxian spirits he may suddenly find they don't 'recognise' him and his normal practises don't work).
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