Wow, so much confusion about one simple word. Okay, here is the result of my personal research into the subject. Take it as you wish.

First a little simple elementary school grammar for everyone. The suffix -ism means that you are talking about a distinctive doctrine, system, or theory. When it comes to Pagans there is no one unifying distinctive doctrine, system, or theory. There are over 2500 different religions, theosophies, and belief systems, as well as a variety of individual practices that are classed as being Pagan. Which is why people get the idea that there are no rules to being a Pagan.

Now, each of those 2500 paths has their own "rules" and some have a lot more than others. There are some Pagan paths that you cannot practice alone, their rules forbid it. This does not stop a lot of people from inventing their own versions of these paths.

Gypsies are the most common example. The Roma people, the caravan dwelling travelers of lore, share an ethnic heritage. We are a mostly olive skinned people who trace our history back to India, and we are still hunting for where we actually began. We do not call ourselves Gypsies. The ones you meet at Pagan festivals and Renaissance fairs are most often Gaje (non Roma) who are so in love with our history and lore that they have styled their beliefs around what they think the Roma are.

We have to begin to find some common ground among ourselves. Without some true community among Pagans, we will always remain a fringe group. The Roma people (yes I am a Roma) had to do the same thing. Though we are literally all over the planet now, we formed a union among our peoples through the use of the Internet. We come out in large groups to protest not only ills against our people, but since 1999, when our ways were officially listed under the heading of "pagan beliefs" we began reaching out to help the pagans who honor us at least in the inventiveness of their ideas about us.