Issue 3, Vol. 112 (2025)

Using the concept of symbolic efficacy, the article analyses why the discourse and practices of personal development are considered effective. Attention is paid to the experience of personal development practices interwoven with holistic spiritualities and the issues connected to the workplace. It is based on qualitative research conducted among Slovak workers between 2020 and 2022. While it considers the data from more than twenty semi-structured interviews, the analysis uses the data from six people engaged in the high sphere of management who are active in holistic spiritualities. It shows how they develop a lived religion, emphasising the holistic, self-aware, and authentic self that behaves ethically in the workplace and society to transform it. These tools of personal development are in synch with the new spirit of capitalism, embracing artistic and social critique, and the over-humanisation of the workplace.

This article presents a qualitative study exploring 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 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 a critical stance 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.

The text 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 key role in mediating meaning, transformation, and emotional regulation. The text is based on my own research and contemporary theoretical approaches to affective bonds, spirituality, and the transformation of individual emotions into collective experience.

This study offers a deictic analysis of two magical formulas used in the spiritual-healing practice in the Traditional School of Reiki in Czechia. Drawing on autoethnographic material and using approaches from linguistic anthropology, semiotics, and speech act theory, the article 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 tool of ritual transformation, it enables the speaker to act as a mediator between the profane and a spiritually constructed reality.