Paint It Black
What is the ‘Lefthand Path’?
In attempting to annex four regions of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin announced in a speech of September 30, 2022, “The repression of freedom is taking on the outlines of a ‘reverse religion,’ of real Satanism,” claiming that Western liberal outlooks on matters like gender identity amounted to a “denial of man.”
The baleful misuse of Satanism in polemics is now playing out on a geopolitical scale. It is bigoted, inaccurate, and dangerous. In this essay, first published June 18, 2022, I consider the actualities of what the despot called a “reverse religion,” and what it means in the lives of seekers, including my own. — MH
* * *
Our spiritual pursuits in the West frequently derive from the Abrahamic traditions — Judaism-Christianity-Islam — and from variations of Vedic, Taoist, shamanic, or Buddhist teachings. At a turning point in my search about five years ago, I found these expressions, in both traditional and esoteric iterations, unsatisfying, at least of themselves.
I sought a more self-driven path. One of attainment, proteanism, and self-expression. Although I did not embark on my search with this intention — or with resistance to it — I found that my approach came to coalesce with what is sometimes called the lefthand path.
