Hi Shekinah. I just joined the other day and noticed your post. My wife is Wiccan and while I'm okay with it, it's not really my own cup of tea insofar as a spiritual path. I have, however, absorbed enough so I might be of a bit of help. At that, I can only speak specifically of Wicca and not other neo-pagan faiths, and even that only as my wife practices it. Any corrections and additions would be welcome. My wife did recommend one of her books, "The Truth about Witchcraft Today" by Scott Cunningham, as a good concise introduction so this may be of more help.
Well, here goes...Basically, connection to the divine specifically and predominantly through nature is the main distinctive of Wicca. It includes contemplation, but also involves actively trying to raise interior spiritual power through spiritual exercises, including esoteric exercises known as magick. Witches are encouraged to use this power ethically, believing that you get what you do to others (good or bad) returned threefold. (Why may be literal, or may be a symbolic way of saying you get more than you bargained for.) Presumably this does lead to inner and outer transformation, but with apologies I'm not really clear on how.
Wiccan sacred holidays or Sabbats are celebrated at, and approximately halfway between, solstices, and mark the Earth's yearly cycle of birth, growth, and death. Unfortunately the only major sabbat I can describe adequately offhand is the most holy sabbat, Samhain, more widely known as Halloween (Oct 31). On that day Wiccans mark the turn of the earth towards death, and also remember the dead who were close to them in life. The Christian All Saints Day is the next day and has a similar function, though of course adapted for Christian beliefs.
Wicca is open to both men and women, but in my admittedly limited experience seems more attractive to women than men. This is because it is arguably more friendly to women than mainstream Christianity, and it emphatically is more honoring of the feminine divine principle than mainstream Christianity usually is. This was one of the primary reasons why my wife converted.
I'm not much help on the issue of archetypes. There likely may be groups who worship a polytheistic pantheon where the god/esses thereof have their own individual existence. In my wife's own personal faith, there is one God, or at most a single separate male God and another separate Goddess, and all other deities are simply manifestations thereof.
I hope this helps some.