The problem with neo-paganism for me is that they are not living traditions. People want to connect with their ancestors and the spirituality of their ancestors, but the problem is, they've never met their ancestors. They were not raised by their ancestors. They do not share a world view with their ancestors. And, their ancestors did not choose to write things down. You can say they didn't have the technology, or, you could also say, they didn't need to. They didn't need to because they were part of a living oral tradition. And, our later ancestors changed and sometimes deleted those traditions.
Inevitably, even if it comes from a place of good intent, neo-paganism is recreationism, like experimental archaeology, and recreationism has a blurry line between itself and recreation, in the sense of a leisure activity, akin to live action role playing.
Neo-pagans tend to see this as an insult, I guess, I mean I was banned from r/pagan by anonymous mods, but they really shouldn't. It is simply an analysis. I suppose there is nothing controversial about this analysis to me, because I have always seen all religions as made up. The difference is, with a living tradition, you have something made by layers and layers of generations, each of whom have added, subtracted, and changed the tradition in the course of their lives, and in enculturating the next generations. Living traditions are aged. They are rich, complex, and internally contradictory.
Neo-pagans on the other hand learn about pagan beliefs from communities of people who have created a new thing from books they've read, Wikipedia, reddit, or world-built out of whole cloth. This whole thing grew out of Victorian era recreationism, which grew out of the 18th century Romantic movement.
If you are going to practice neo-paganism, know your true roots, at least.
