The article highlights changes in the religious landscape of the Western cultural space at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, using the method of bricolage. The article outlines the limits of secularisation, focusing on the academic debate on this phenomenon in Western society. Following the findings of Bryan Wilson, British sociologist of religion, the author shows that secularism in Western culture does not replace religious ideas: basically, transformations of religious character are occurring, and people mainly seek out new forms and expressions for religious dispositions.
Religiosity nowadays is revealed as an area in which a person experiments with the material of life in various combinations and is characterised by a person’s focus on himself, by the shift from external authority to inner experience. In order to characterise this shift, the article emphasises the place of mystical experience in modern religiosity and uses Christopher Partridge’s conception of “occulture”. According to the author, this conception helps to understand better the religious views and beliefs of modern Western man.
