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Paper short abstract

The presentation focuses on women's spiritual circles in Slovakia as spaces of empowerment where authenticity as a moral value and as a path to the "true self" is constructed through emotional intensity, self-disclosure, and shared narratives, enabling transformation and female self-determination.

Paper long abstract

This presentation analyses contemporary alternative spirituality in Slovakia, emphasising the gender aspect and authenticity as mechanisms of women's empowerment. Authenticity is a key concept with dual significance in women's circles. Firstly, it functions as a moral value and a quality of genuine experience. At the same time, it represents an end goal: the search for the 'true self' (Jenkins et al., 2020), which is a key aspect of inner transformation and is closely linked to contemporary individualism.

The presentation focuses on specific mechanisms that construct and support authenticity in women's circles, such as intensely experienced emotions, symbolic and physical self-disclosure, and narrative scripts highlighting transformation through archetypal experiences. I argue that these mechanisms serve as costly signals that build a sense of safety and trust in informal settings, creating spaces where participants can share similar life philosophies within less rigid norms than those of traditional churches.

These collective spiritual activities function as a form of collective therapy for coping with life situations. Spiritual transformation usually occurs when women confront discrepancies that require new meaning systems (Paloutzian, 2005: 334). This is reflected in self-perception, identity, values and behaviour, including the systematic reinterpretation of events (Luhrmann, 1989).

By combining classical ritual theories (Durkheim and Malinowski) with psychological and cognitive approaches, the analysis emphasises how female-only spaces can empower individuals through authentic self-disclosure, collective support and identity transformation. Women's circles therefore represent spiritual exploration as well as female self-determination and empowerment in a society characterised by patriarchal religious structures.