Aleister Crowley is the most notoriously transgressive figure in modern Western esotericism, and his best known precept is "Do what thou wilt". This article seeks to elucidate the place of Crowley's precept in the history of esotericism and transgression. More specifically, it seeks to make two points. First, it shows, through an investigation of its sources and influences, that the precept had highly transgressive overtones in the period when Crowley adopted and popularised it. These overtones extended to sexual excess, religious deviancy and fascist politics. Second, it argues that the precept was repurposed in a major way in the latter part of the twentieth century. The precept became domesticated, as the founders of the Wicca movement subsumed it into their own ethical maxim, the "Wiccan Rede". This development serves as an example of how some of the more transgressive and problematic elements of the Western esoteric tradition have come to be softened and obscured in contemporary mass-market, suburban forms of practice such as Wicca.
Studie se věnuje dialogu Anselma z Canterbury De grammatico. Tento spis byl samotným autorem označen jako úvod do dialektiky. V dobové dialektice zastával klíčové místo Aristotelův spis Kategorie. Tento článek se proto pokouší interpretovat Anselmův dialog jako určitou pedagogicky koncipovanou podobu komentáře k Aristotelovým Kategoriím. V návaznosti na Anselmův spis jsou postupně představeny jednotlivé teze z Aristotelových Kategorií (jak tzv. antepredicamenta, tak pojednání o substanci, kvalitě a částečně i vlastnictví) a způsob, jakým s nimi Anselm pracoval. and The paper deals with the dialogue De grammatico written by Anselm of Canterbury. The author of the dialogue himself described the work as an introduction to dialectics. In that epoch, the leading role in the given art belonged to Aristotle's Categories. As a result, the article aims to interpret Anselm's dialogue as a commentary to Aristotle's Categories conceived in a pedagogic form. Following Anselm's treatise, the paper analyses particular theses from the Categories (firstly the so-called antepredicamenta, then the categories of substance, quality, and partly also having) and the approach Anselm employed in working with them.
The paper focuses on the topic of conceptualizing religion in Czech society today from the perspective of the Study of Religions. The paper further develops and assesses in theoretical terms the findings of descriptive content analysis published by Veronika Hásová and Jan Váně (2014), who identified and quantified the frequency of variables of religiosity applied by researchers in the Czech Republic. The characteristics applied most frequently are categorized as functional characteristics (religious affiliation, church attendance) and substantive characteristics (belief in diverse religious phenomena) of religiosity. Results and conclusions of the analysis of religiosity in the Czech Republic depend heavily on how the functional and substantive characteristics of religiosity are conceived and formulated. The functional characteristic of religious affiliation conceived in terms of church membership results in a low measure of religiosity and supports the conclusion concerning the purported irrelevance of religions and religious identities in the Czech society today. Other surveys based on different conceptualizations of religious identities reveal the relevance of religion as far as the attitudes and values of respondents are concerned. Topics connected to religions and religious identities continue to be discussed within the public sphere of Czech society, e.g. through the media. As far as the substantive characteristics of belief in religious phenomena are concerned, the specification of the subject of such belief is of vital importance. As surveys of religiosity reveal, respondents relatively often declare their belief in or reliance on phenomena connected with alternative religiosity or spirituality. The ways of conceptualizing religion in Czech society today often ignore the dynamics of religious change in modern societies and do not take into account changes in the perceived content and functions of religious phenomena. Critical examination of the variables of religiosity leads towards a re-examination of conclusions concerning the purported irreligious or secular nature of Czech society today