not looking for anything in particular, but wanting to do some extensive research on things like pagan religions and the occult. i don't go outside my house much, i prefer to do everything online. so basically a library is not an option. anyways, any reliable website suggestions or other research help would be amazing? is it possible to contact historians, etc? thanks for your time.
I think you have your answer in your question. I personally believe you can find anything on the web given a little time and correct search terms. I bet searching on Paganism will bring up 1,000s of sites and you'll find a lot of interesting stuff in your journey. You might even get an idea from the search. I recently was told to give a character an 'innate' ability, it took me 3 attempts to arrive at 'hereditary magic' and find what I needed but I got there in the end. I'm sure you will find that some historians are thrilled to be contacted while others might ignore you. Good luck and happy hunting.
You can certainly try contacting historians since as Quille said some of them (a lot actually) love to talk about their field of expertise. I found wikipedia to be a big source of information on different mythologies, religions and interpretations as well as other fields like cryptology and pseudo-sciences.
It sounds more like you want to research bizarre, demonic, or magical beliefs and rituals than mythology. Mythology in my mind is much broader than pagan religions and the occult. There have been a couple recent witch burnings and the murder of albinos or their body parts in Papua New Guinea and I don't recall which countries in Africa. Is that what you are looking for? Why don't you just use a Net search?
Wiki is a great source because you can go to all the citations and external links from there. I use Wiki as a starting point for a lot of my searches.
