The article provides an overview of chosen aspects of the cult of Santa Muerte („Saint Death”) in Mexico from a semiotic perspective. What distinguishes Santa Muerte from other Mexican folk Saints is her astonishing, constantly growing popularity in recent decades, as well as her exceptional receptiveness to elements originating from diverse currents of popular religiosity, including commercial esoterics, neopagan practices, and Cuban Santeria. These differenials can be explained by indicating a set of particular features that enable to qualify Saint Death as a „semantic lens”.

This research looks at the activity of an unknown top-secret subversive group called Ankabut-e Sorkh (“The Red Spider”), that operated in Iran in the early 1950’s. Fully inspired and funded by the Soviet Union, at first glance it aimed at sparking a revolution in Iran. Nonetheless, the objectives of Ankabut-e Sorkh not only involved a call for the end of the monarchy in Iran but were more complex in nature. The slogans it invoked were directed at the poorly educated masses to fight for the freedom of the oppressed workers and farmers. Thus, only they could become members of the organization. It strongly refrained from accepting any intellectuals. Ankabut-e Sorkh was also at odds with Tudeh, the main leftist Iranian party that, although operating underground, remained the most powerful organization of the Iranian left-wing political scene.
This research on Ankabut-e Sorkh aims to introduce this organization to a wider audience. It draws mostly upon counterintelligence sources produced by the Second Directorate of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces.

Butoh is, created in the late 1950s, a Japanese avant-garde dance theatre. Its main representatives were Hijikata Tatsumi (1928–1986) and Ōno Kazuo (1906–2010). Hijikata criticized the rigid division into theater and dance, denied any form of strict codification of dance, and also rejected the concepts of technique and methods. Also for Ōno rigid frame of existing dance genres turned out to be insufficient and he created his own dance, based on structural improvisation. They both started with contemporary dance, fascinated by its possibilities, and finally created their own form. Intuition, spontaneity and the ability to transformation were the key to their dance. Some researchers connect butoh with Zen, seeing it as a meditation in motion, involving cleansing of motions from intentions and release from oneself. The position that links butoh with Zen is sometimes criticized and presented as its unjustified stereotypization. The aim of the article is to look at the similarities and relations between butō and the philosophy of Zen Buddhism.