Číslo 3, roč. 112 (2025)

Using the concept of symbolic efficacy, the article analyses why the discourse and practices of personal development are considered effective. The article explores the experience of personal development practices interwoven with holistic spiritualities and the issues connected to the workplace. It is based on qualitative research conducted with Slovak workers between 2020 and 2022. While it draws on data from more than twenty semi-structured interviews, the analysis focuses on six individuals working in high-level management who actively engage in holistic spiritualities. It shows how they cultivate personal development practices together with lived religion, emphasising the holistic, self-aware, and authentic self that contributes to the development of the ethical self via self-care, ethical leadership and consumption and corporate social responsibility. These tools of personal development are in synch with the new spirit of capitalism, embracing artistic and social critique.

This article presents a qualitative study that explores how managers in the secular Czech context perceive and experience spirituality in their professional lives. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of interviews with twenty participants, the study reveals that spirituality is rarely associated with organized religion and instead takes on individualized, intuitive, and pragmatic forms. It serves as a means of pursuing self-development, coping with stress and existential crises, and finding deeper meaning in work. Personal rituals, meditation, symbolic objects, and a strong emphasis on value integrity play a significant role. The study also highlights skepticism towards corporate-driven spiritual initiatives, which are often perceived as superficial or inauthentic. The findings illustrate the dynamic and multifaceted nature of spirituality in managerial practice and show that even in a highly secular society, it can be a vital source of professional identity etc.

The article focuses on collective forms of alternative spirituality in urban environments in Slovakia, with special emphasis on emotional and ritualized mechanisms of cohesion within women’s circles. These gatherings, while emphasizing individual experience and personal spirituality, create specific forms of collective experience. Singing, dancing, movement, shared narratives, and affectively attuned interactions function as tools of emotional connection that allow participants to construct temporary communities (communitas) and create a sense of psychological safety. The study shows that even in an environment dominated by an emphasis on authenticity and individual experience, the group plays a central role in mediating meaning, transformation, and emotional regulation. The article is based on original research and contemporary theoretical approaches to affective bonds, spirituality, and the transformation of individual emotions into collective experience.

This article provides a deictic analysis of two magical formulas used in the spiritual-healing practice of the Traditional School of Reiki in Czechia. Drawing on autoethnographic material and using approaches from linguistic anthropology, semiotics, and speech act theory, it examines how linguistic means construct the subject of the utterance, its addressees, and the spiritual entity to which the formulas refer. The core of the analysis lies in their deictic structure, with attention paid to the tension between their grammatical and pragmatic levels. This phenomenon is captured through the concept of oscillating tension, which arises when the speaker, through different grammatical persons, refers to the same or ontologically consubstantial referent. The analysis shows that language here functions not only referentially but also performatively: as a medium of ritual transformation, it enables the speaker to act as a mediator between the profane and a spiritually constructed reality.