as much as I do geniunely value academic work on ancient religions & think its very valuable for modern polytheism. my pet peeve is when non-pagan academics (or just history nerds tbh) react to smth like a post by a polytheist, defining their own practice or their own theology, with "well that's not how xyz was done!" "that's not how xyz was originally thought of!" and/or treating modern polytheism like a cool experiment and not actual people's genuinely held religious beliefs.
it all comes down to a lack of understanding of what it means to revive these religions? like they are living faiths. polytheists aren't just cosplay or historical reenactors. and its especially wild when we are talking about faiths that had such diversity over thousands of years, over various different communities, over millions of different individuals.
im not talking about correcting misinformation or providing a new historical perspective. its the attitude of "your faith is illegitimate, or less legitimate, to me because its not just a recreation of what this religion looked like (to me) over 2000 years ago in a completely different time and social context!" that gets to me.
and because of how history works, what ends up happening is whatever wealthy land owning literate men in whatever period of time is most well-known practiced becomes the definition of the entire religion. so queer people and women and people of color get condescended to because their faith is more anti-patriarchal and anti-imperialist. again, in faiths KNOWN to be extremely diverse in thought and practice, with SO MANY practitioners who undoubtedly had much different perspectives than the mainstream one that just didn't get recorded.
polytheists aren't practicing our religions to entertain or impress anybody but ourselves and our ancestors and our gods. you need to engage with modern polytheism as a legitimate and LIVING form of spirituality, not just going through the motions of a dead and static religion from a dusty textbook. & I say that as a lover of dusty textbooks!
