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We think of sinister as an adjective to describe what is frightfully suggestive of darkness or evil. “Sinister” signifying evil means “left,” or left side of the body. There was a time that Christianity thought being left-handed was a sign of being under the control of Satan, or a sinful trait at the very least, one that needed holy remediation. Perhaps because scripture shows preference to the right side. While the earliest uses of the word in English—dating from the 14th century—pertain to some measure of evil, foreboding, or malevolence, others retain the Latin meaning of “left”
The association of “left” with “evil” is likely because of the dominance of right-handed people within a population. Such darkness wasn’t always attached to that side, however. The Ancient Celts, for example, worshipped the left side, associating it with femininity and the fertile womb. But beginning with the appearance of Eve on Adam’s left side in accounts of Genesis, the Christian tradition finds instances of the left side being pinned to immorality.
The Book of Matthew describes how God will divide nations on the Day of Judgment, “as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left,” with those on the right sent to the kingdom of Heaven and those on the left “cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Left-handed people comprise only 10 percent of the population, and the preference for the left hand demonstrated by the popular minority was attributed to demonic possession, leading to accusations of witchcraft.
In the 20th century, anthropologists and psychologists identified left-handedness as a biological anomaly, one associated with deviancy but that could be corrected away with behavioral reinforcement.
If ‘Left’ Is Evil, What About ‘Right’?
The historical association of sinister with evil or backwardness is balanced linguistically by the fact that dexter, the Latin word meaning “on the right side,” comes with a largely positive connotation that survives throughout its linguistic descendants.
To be dexterous, for example, is to be good with the hands (like a surgeon) or a clever thinker, while one who is ambidextrous uses one’s left and right hand equally well. And of course, our word right is used to mean “correct,” “true,” or “ethically sound” (“a right answer”; “didn’t have the right address”; “the right thing to do”).
A popular maxim found on refrigerator magnets says that if the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handed people are in their right minds. In spite of that observation, the linguistic bias against the left side, and left-handedness in particular, is entrenched in English and many other languages, and likely will never go away.1
Paths
Spiritually, the left hand often represents the sinister, unconventional, or hidden, contrasting with the right hand’s association with the divine, honor, and the established order. This symbolism is particularly evident in the distinction between the “Left-Hand Path” and the “Right-Hand Path” in some spiritual traditions, where the former focuses on self-interest and breaking taboos, while the latter emphasizes self-growth through socially accepted and ethical practices. However, interpretations vary, with some traditions seeing the left hand as a source of power, balance, or associated with the feminine and lunar principles.
Contrasting interpretations
| Interpretation | Description |
| Western/Biblical | Often associated with the “sinister” or negative connotations due to the left hand’s symbolic representation of judgment, secondary status, or misfortune. |
| Eastern/Tantric | Considered the “Left-Hand Path” (Vāmācāra) to be an unorthodox path that embraces heterodox practices and breaks taboos to achieve spiritual growth. |
| Feminine/Lunar | In some symbolic systems, the left side is associated with the passive, receptive, and the lunar principle, while the right is associated with the active, male, and solar principle. |
| In some traditions | The left hand can be associated with strength, balance, and divine representation, as in some Indian traditions.2 |
In Western Esotericism, left-hand path and right-hand path are two opposing approaches to magic. Various groups engaged with the occult and ceremonial magic use the terminology to establish a dichotomy, broadly simplified as (malicious) black magic on the left and (benevolent) white magic on the right. Others approach the left/right paths as different kinds of workings, without connotations of good or evil magical actions. Still others treat the paths as fundamental schemes, connected with external divinities on the right, contrasted with self-deification on the left.
The terms have their origins in tantra: the right-hand path (RHP, or dakṣiṇācāra) applied to magical or spiritual groups that follow specific ethical codes and adopt social convention, while the left-hand path (LHP, or vāmācāra) adopts the opposite attitude, breaking taboos and abandoning set morality in order to practice and embrace heterodox practices.
Right-hand path
The right-hand path is commonly thought to refer to magical or religious groups which adhere to a certain set of characteristics:
- They divide the concepts of mind and body and spirit into three separate, albeit interrelated, entities.
- They adhere to a specific moral code and a belief in some form of judgement, such as karma or the Threefold Law.
- The occultist Dion Fortune considered Abrahamic religions to be RHP.
Left-hand path
Historian Dave Evans studied self-professed followers of the left-hand path in the early 21st century, making several observations about their practices:
- They often reject societal convention and the status quo which some suggest is in a search for spiritual freedom. As a part of this, LHP followers embrace magical techniques that would traditionally be viewed as taboo, for instance using sex magic or embracing Satanic imagery. As Mogg Morgan wrote, the “breaking of taboos makes magic more potent and can lead to reintegration and liberation, [for example] the eating of meat in a vegetarian community can have the same liberating effect as anal intercourse in a sexually inhibited society”.
- They often question religious or moral dogma, instead adhering to forms of personal anarchism.
- They often embrace sexuality and incorporate it into magical ritual such as in Tantra, long practiced in parts of both Europe and Asia.3
Following the Left Hand Path: Words from a Gate Walker
I am not here to help you. But if something I’ve learned is useful to you, take it and make it your own. Similar words were once said to me by a Druid, whose example was of great help to me when I was transitioning my magick practice from the right to the left hand path. I grew up in Sedona, Arizona, where you are just as likely to encounter a New Age guru in the local grocery as you are to run headlong into a soccer mom hustling through her weekly errands. I was genuinely innocent and sincere, and when different authorities of new and “exciting” paths would say, “I have been sent/missioned/gifted with true wisdom of the REAL WAY,” I often found myself sitting with open ears and an open heart. By my teens, I had already experienced many strange, metaphysical and clearly magickal things that my Roman Catholic faith could not address, and I was hungry for anything that could.
Fast-forward through my years of meandering through a wilderness of ascension-based ritual magick and alchemical/craft practice. I found myself magickally and spiritually bankrupt. I was willing to do anything to liberate myself from what had clearly become a prison. Turning myself over to authority after magickal authority had taught me nothing except that, again, I had foolishly invested myself in the wrong thing. Lo and behold, literature on the Left Hand Path drifted quietly and unassumingly into my reading list. The recommendation of turning away from the flock, of turning inwards to reflect constantly on disassembling and demolishing deeply held taboos, really spoke to me. I knew on a deep intrinsic level that I had been, to some degree, brainwashed by the faith I was raised in – but to what degree I was uncomfortably uncertain. The pain that had caused me (and was still causing me) led me to often practice magick as a form of damage control. Magick as pain management. But this complete spiritual about-face (not just in sense of recognizing systematically and consciously rejecting that brain washing, but also of developing everything I would come to believe from an evidence-based, self-initiated system) was shocking to me.
How could I become my own spiritual authority? The idea was something I had been taught to mortally fear. And though there was a chilling thrill in the idea of following the “Sinister” path, my spirituality and my magick had to be based on something deeper than spite. But now, after immersing myself in the dark quest for 3 transformative years, I can honestly say there was never another option for me. Doing anything but turning inward would have been a great crime against myself. Diving into the qliphothic depths of dissolving personal polarities and taboos has been the greatest adventure of my life. I had become host to a whole catalog of parasitic ideas and theologies that were nothing but answers to what, I discovered, were questions I had never even asked. What the left hand path has given me is the knowledge to shape my own intellectual/magickal tools, tools I can use to reforge myself into what actually feels true. Deep in my gut. Deeper than my gut, even, in the core seat from which springs everything that is me. I am yet just a baby lefty, with mountains of work to do, but the liberation I have already experienced is far greater than any comfort a false authority might offer.
The descent into the self (and the exaltation of the death of what was discredited) has lead me away from people, away from jobs, from long-held aspirations and even counterintuitive choices about how to care for this shell of a body and its health. Adhering to no dogma, cutting ties with alleged support systems, evaluating the nature of all that is false within the self has led me sacrifice much, but those sacrifices have all been joys. Sometimes painful/terrifying/ecstatic joys, but joys nonetheless. To know what grows forth, what poisonous foliage erupts from those cleared spaces within my soul, acts as an antidote to the lies that swirl around this mundane world like so many annoying mosquitos.
One might ask, then, why come forward to write anything public at all? Is it not some sort of ego-based, vainglorious lie? Simply and honestly put, after serious evaluation of my motives: it is to selfishly calcify my practice. I do not seek appreciation or acceptance, validation or vilification. As a worker of the sinister works among other workers of various types, I seek to codify my simple practice. This is an act of service to my Work, if it winds up being of service to others that’s good, but it’s not important. This will not be a form of dogma, but because it is important to economize, I will document what works for me. I cultivate and tend my current with the tools of the left hand path. To steal something from the Sufis on the topic of spiritual seekers, a bee “does not worry when she visits any flower, and she takes what she needs.” Armed with the tools of discernment and watchfulness provided by my path, all things yield wisdom, whether in their necessary destruction or in the celebration of their originality. Everything that stains my memory or makes an impression on my heart becomes a useful mirror in my descent. The important distinction for me to make is: does it reflect the false light of external construct, or does it reflect my inner dark light that I journey toward with all my effort? I am not here to help you. But if something I’ve learned is useful to you, take it and make it your own.
In the immortal words of one of my favorite artists, Jo Weldon, “Do whatever the fuck you want.”4 – Rosebud
Resources (educational and informational purposes only):
1.https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/sinister-left-dexter-right-history
4.https://cvltnation.com/following-left-hand-path-words-gate-walker/