Hi,
in my personal view Wicca and Animism are not compatible concepts. Animism is one aspect of many religious practices around the world, but focused on the land that has created your body and your connection to the environment.
Gardnerian Wicca is rooted in western ceremonial magic and Orders, like OTO or Freemasons. It includes Folklore elements and imitations of rituals which where described by ancient Roman and Greek texts or appropriated in non-european cultures. It is not bound to La Tene cultural or genetic roots (Celtic) or territories and can be practiced by everyone, like modern Christianity (Was once an ethnic religion too and linked to middle eastern environment) or many Indian and Classical Antiquity Mediterranian religions.
You said you came here because of avoiding spiritual counterfeit, that's a good intention, but very hard for an European person to manage, because, almost everything in European Neo-Pagan Groups is far from authentic practice and ancient ideas about the world and us.
We where raised in Nationalism and Christianity, so that we think that belonging to a group is defined by what we like or where we had been raised or migrated, but never by our real story, which is the story of our ancestors.
If you want to know something about the real history of Europe and yourself, you should better read archaeology and anthropological books and papers, instead of New-Age Stuff or Neo-Pagan literature.
I don't want to shower you with all that stuff that I read in the last years, but there are some nice books out there, published by the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte in Halle, some are in English, but they are not published in the USA, like this one:
https://www.amazon.de/Mesolithic-burials-International-Landesmuseums-Vorgeschichte/dp/3944507436So you have to search for yourself to find good an actual literature about European archaeology and anthropology in the US.
If you want to know who could have been your pre-christian Ancestors and which Landscapes had formed your body and mind beneath modern life, than you have to do commercial genetic testing on Autosomal Genetics, Paternal Lineage (Y Haplogroup) and mitochondrial DNA.
Another problem is, you will be alone, even if you know the lineage of your biological Ancestors in Europe's History, there are a few people who know this, even fewer who where interested in connecting with their relatives and building community to share stories and philosophize about the findings of the ancient past. Most people I met, are complete ignorant about this topic in general, they live in the here and now, no past, no tomorrow, they are not interested in their own story, only in politics.
It can be also hurtful for you personally, because there where many genocides in ancient Europe, forced cultural changes, the start of heavy destruction of environment and European ecosystem since late Neolithic times, and where will your ancestors be in this stories, what will be written in your genes? Europe is far from being a homogeneous place, there where many different ethnic groups beneath today's nationalism but they can only be visible via genetics, because their cultural roots are almost dead.
When I think of findings from ancient European cultures, I must mention that there where many bloody rituals, human and animal sacrifices, skull cult, skull masks, trophy hunt, tribal wars, many practices of ancestor worship, which where seen as pervert by today's Europeans and so called white Americans (Notice the bigotry!). Our modern concepts of gender equality, family, free will and individual soul are not compatible to many ancient European views/practices, so you must have the psychological strength to accept this facts when you read about them.
So in the point of animism, it can be said that there was a world in the last warming period, that cannot be imagined by today's people. Hyenas, Elephants, Lions, Pumas, Monkeys, Wisent, Aurochs, 3 Species of Rhinoceros, Wild Horses, Hamsters, Lemmings, Turtles and many more Animals lived in Europe before the last glaciation. Even in Mesolithic times, short after the disappearing of the ice sheets, there where more species of plants and animals than today, many had been wiped out by human practices of neolithic farming, clearing of the forests, bronze age mass settlements and cattle herding industry. So the landscapes of Europe had been disturbed since over 5000 years, what you see in Europe today is a environment which is always strongly formed by human settlement and economy. Animistic concepts often include a ban on using specific places, animals or plants for personal enrichment, and it seems, that this concept had been discarded, or strongly reduced in the prehistoric past of Europe.
The last tribal societies in Europe before the christianization where in contact with roman empire and also exchanged religious ideas with them like personalized gods, because of that they where the easiest to understand for us today, but they where also falsified by economical and cultural pressure. Many tribes worked as mercenaries of roman empire to survive. If you are interested in this, you should read this book, de Bello Gallico:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_GallicoIronically the Romans seem to believe, that all other people are also worshiping personalized gods, so they created many new gods in contact with foreign cultures, that never where worshiped before. And the Romans also believed that foreign Tribes worshiped their own roman gods, like modern Christians see in every foreign concept demons or Satan, because they believe their religious ideas are universal for everyone.
There are many sacred sites that you can visit in Europe, on some there are also museums or other information. Some ancient cemeteries and been tested for genetic ancestry so you can perhaps find out if your distant ancestors lived there.
