I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

complex. Since it has frequently been wondered if there is any link between
the leftwardness of the Vama Marg and the political designation "left-wing",
we should first establish that there is no connection at all between the two.
The specific numinous significance of leftwardness can be traced
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back to man's earliest known religiomagical symbolism in ancient
Mesopotamian Sumer, but seems to be an almost universal concept.
Tellingly, the ancient Sumerians unfailingly spoke of "right and left" in that
order, believing that it would invite bad luck to mention the left first. In the
modern world, this idea survives in such superstitions as that of placing
one's right shoe on before the left. Mesopotamian figurines of protective
deities were always portrayed striding forward with the left leg, the better to
move against the left-dwelling monstrous creatures that populated creation's
shadow side.
In Sumerian divination, the right side of the moon was thought to be
fortunate, while the left was ominous. In this earliest of documented human
civilizations, greetings, blessings and eating were always carried out with
the right hand, which was associated with purity, a tradition that still
survives in India. The Indian goddess Kali, the darkest spectrum of Shakti in
her many-armed wrathful form, is most frequently depicted as making ritual
gestures of blessing with her right hands, while brandishing a sword and
decapitated head in her left hands – the simultaneously purifying and terrible
nature of the sinister current.
It has been speculated that the ancient association of right with good
and left with evil may simply mirror the fact that most people are righthanded
– a primitive assumption that what is normal must be virtuous, while
what is unusual must be wrong. Parents whose children are born left-handed
will often take measures to assure that this anomaly is corrected, or "set
right". Shaking hands with the left hand is still actively avoided, even by
people normally untouched by superstition. Therefore, to deliberately turn
left is to deviate from what would seem to be the body's natural course and
tempt fate. Simply going left, when tradition tells us that right is the only
way to go, is the first taboo violation of the left-hand path, the initial
separation from the habitual inclinations of humanity.
Symbolically, to incur upon one's self the powers of the left is to
embrace the adverse side of existence instinctively shunned by the
preponderance of humans. The left is the Other, the unknown, a direction
that is everywhere known as the "wrong" way to go, in contrast to the welltrod
path of the right.
Many of the world's languages reflect this deeply rooted aversion to
leftwardness. The modem English word "left" derives from the Old English
lyft, which meant weak or palsied, connected to "leper", among other
unpleasant associations. Another Old English word for "left" was winestra,
which meant "friendlier". This word provides us with an interesting case of
the magical use of words. By euphemistically referring to the feared left side
as friendly, the speaker hoped to magically appease the destructive forces of
leftwardness, a practice akin to calling a snarling wolf "nice doggy."
The Latinate word "sinister", of course, suggests much more than
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literal leftwardness – it carries distinctly negative connotations of its own.
It's also a common synonym for the malefic, a meaning it has held since
ancient Roman soothsayers first interpreted phenomena situated on the left
(sinistrum) to be unfavorable omens. Those on the right (dexter, whose
etymological connection with the Sanskrit daksina is obvious) were thought
to be benevolent. No doubt the ancient association between the words left
and sinister has increased the impression that the left-hand path is
intrinsically evil.
So, is the left-hand path only to be understood as one half of a