New Age An umbrella term for a wide range of personal and individual beliefs and practices influenced primarily by eastern religions, paganism, spiritism.
What stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation of paganism.
However, one could just as easily view it as a merging of classical Hellenistic values and Celtic paganism that resulted from the Roman conquest of Celtic settlements.
Religion played an important role in politics, and as the legend goes, in 987, the Rus prince Vladamir I decided it was time to abandon Slavic paganism, and sent emissaries to explore neighboring faiths.
When creating the world of Middle-earth, Tolkien was heavily inspired by the myths of old, taking influences from Norse paganism as found in for example the Poetic Edda and the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.