AUTHOR’S NOTE: As we all know, dreams can be extremely symbolic, especially at their most impressionistic. I had such an episode last night.

I set out to attend a mystical retreat on a mountain-top. But there were no roads leading there so I had to bushwhack through thick forest, occasionally scrambling hand-over-hand up the slope. I remember very little of the gathering itself except the tawdry gift shop I passed through on my way out, buying nothing. When I reached the parking lot I realized that I had a car waiting for me, but instead of the dark blue of my usual ride it was a deep red color.

I started on my way home, but soon encountered a “tee” intersection. I seem to recall having a traveling companion who said “Always take the right-hand road at any fork.” That individual soon disappeared, but since the recommended route was heading in the right direction I decided to follow it. Then there was another “tee” and another, and soon the right-hand option diverged dramatically from where I wanted to go, no longer bearing me down the mountain but across it.

Then the pavement gave way to a gravel surface that turned into a series of steep, narrow upward inclines leading toward a second peak. I asked my companion whether the car would make it, but I was now alone. I met an occasional vehicle coming downhill and had to give it room to pass. Alongside and over the passage there were bright signs and banners with black lettering on yellow panels and fabric stating in essence “This is not the way!” although the actual wording was more imaginative and I can’t remember any of it.

The landscape reached a plateau and the road branched yet again, passing several small, dank lakes with desolate villages on their shores, but there were no people or creatures of any kind to be seen. After several of these it reached a dead-end at the worst of the lot, and I had to retrace my steps. At the first turn I went past it to see if the road went anywhere in that direction, but it quickly ended as well, so I went back the way I had come.

At the next intersection on my return I proceeded straight through what would originally have been a left-hand turn had I taken it, and the same thing at the next juncture, and so felt that I was now on the right path. Then I awoke, realizing that if I had stayed to the left from the very beginning I would have avoided all of the wasted time and effort.

My understanding is that religious types consider the “left-hand-path” to be the way of temptation, of the Devil and of the occult, while the right-hand track is the “way of the righteous.” I also recall a Kabbalistic premise that “God dispenses mercy with his right hand and punishment with his left hand,” which is the assumption underlying the pillars on the Tree of Life (although I have discovered other interpretations that I like better). There is also the irrational notion that left-handedness (technically called “sinister”) is somehow distasteful.

I have been following esoteric (aka “occult”) pursuits since 1972, and have never found anything remotely perverse in them as long as the practitioner stays away from trying to engage with demonic entities that have no reason to be friendly toward humans. The purpose is often to bend other people to the magician’s will, and I have never had a strong urge to attempt that, preferring instead the Wiccan “three-fold Law of Return” in which transgressors receive their comeuppance thrice over (and yes, I have seen it work in “real-time”). Beyond that goal, the only reason for performing these activities is to prove that I can do it, and I’m long past that point in my spiritual development.

I was just involved in a discussion on the r/occult sub-reddit regarding whether Aleister Crowley’s “unicursal hexagram” is a satanic symbol. I reminded the group that, when he was accused of being a Satanist, he retorted that “To be a Satanist, once must first believe in Satan,” which seemed out of character if Crowley was in fact “the wickedest man in the world” at that time. But he was a vehement anti-Christian owing to the severity of his Plymouth Brethren upbringing, and he had moved beyond any affiliation with its precepts.

Although I’ve never been oppressed by it (other than intellectually), I’ve come to the same awareness of the unctuous inanity (and, it must be said, the moral high-handedness passing for holy writ) of the religious dogma that is intended to instill obedience, so I’ve “kept to the left” whenever I come across it in my metaphysical travels. I’ve always felt that, to be legitimate, religion must offer the “carrot” and avoid resorting to the “stick,” but those men (it’s usually the authoritarian kind) who wield the latter most often have something to gain by it in the form of secular power.