But sometimes you need to approach an unfamiliar deity and you need expert advice on the best way to do it. The most prominent of these deities was probably Woden; other prominent gods included Thunor and Tiw. Theodore's Penitential and the Laws of Wihtred of Kent issued in 695 imposed penalties on those who provided offerings to "demons". No wooden carvings of anthropomorphic figures have been found in the area that once encompassed Anglo-Saxon England that are comparable to those found in Scandinavia or continental Europe.

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The English literature scholar Richard North for instance described it as a "natural religion based on animism". In the final phase of the conversion, which took place during the 670s and 680s, the final two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to be led by pagan rulers — in Sussex and the Isle of Wight — saw their leaders baptised. It has been suggested that the hammer and the swastika were the god's symbols, representing thunderbolts, and both of these symbols have been found in Anglo-Saxon graves, the latter being common on cremation urns. Two words that appear repeatedly in Old English place names hearg and wēoh, have been interpreted as being references to cult spaces, however it is likely that the two terms had distinctive meanings. The scholar Michael Bintley cautioned against this approach, noting that this "'Germanic' paganism" had "never had a single ur-form" from which later variants developed.

In pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England, legends and other stories were transmitted orally instead of being written down; it is for this reason that very few survive today. The pagan Anglo-Saxons followed a calendar with twelve lunar months, with the occasional year having thirteen months so that the lunar and solar alignment could be corrected.

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There are several cases where animal remains were buried in what appears to be ritualistic conditions, for instance at Frilford, Berkshire, a pig or boar's head was buried with six flat stones and two Roman-era tiles then placed on top, while at an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Soham, Cambridgeshire, an ox's head was buried with the muzzle facing down.Meaney suggested that Aldhelm's reference to the snake and stag might be describing a representation of an animal's head atop a pole, in which case it would be related to the animal-head place-names. The pagan Anglo-Saxons also appeared to wear amulets, and there are many cases where corpses were buried with them.

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Conversely, the historian Brian Branston argued for the use of Old Norse sources to better understand Anglo-Saxon pagan beliefs, recognising mythological commonalities between the two rooted in their common ancestry. Perhaps we can use the word “priest” to simply mean “consecrated religious specialist” – but then add what they specialize in.Both secular and church authorities issued condemnations of alleged non-Christian pagan practices, such as the veneration of wells, trees, and stones, right through to the eleventh century and into the High Middle Ages. He argued that these were cultic spaces, and that – rather than being based on a tradition from continental Europe – they were based on a tradition of square enclosure building that dated back to the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain, thus reflecting the adoption of indigenous British ideas into early Anglo-Saxon cult. This has led some archaeologists to suspect a form of suttee, where the female was the spouse of the male, and was killed to accompany him upon death. Such sources have led scholars to put together a pantheon for early medieval England, populated by such murky figures as Woden, Þunor, Tiw, and Frig.