Taking With the Left Hand is the first book to examine the spiritual theft and appropriation that marks our time. A detailed and well-documented study, it illustrates how the enneagram movement commercialized an ancient alchemical symbol; how Robert Burton, founder of The Fellowship of Friends, arrogated The Fourth Way teaching; and how Boris Mouravieff plagiarized and tried to appropriate it.

"William Patrick Patterson's Taking With the Left Hand deals with esoteric teachings in a modern context. In this collection of three essays about various aspects of the legacy of the influential spiritual teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, the author tackles the enneagram craze, the teachings of Boris Mouravieff and a Gurdjieff splinter group, expanding his discussion of these relatively parochial issues to raise more universal questions about the nature and transmission of spiritual truth."

—Publishers Weekly

"Taking With the Left Hand is quite remarkable. I have read it with great pleasure. Patterson always writes absorbingly, and there is no one in the field of Gurdjieff/Oupensky studies that I respect more, or regard as having more authority."

—Colin Wilson, author, From Atlantis to the Sphinx

In addition to Taking with the Left Hand, William Patrick Patterson is the author of four highly praised books on spiritual development: Voices in the Dark: Esoteric, Occult & Secular Voices in Nazi-Occupied Paris 1940–44, Ladies of the Rope, Taking with the Left Hand, Struggle of the Magicians and Eating The "I". He is a longtime student of John Pentland, the man Gurdjieff chose to lead the Work in America, and the editor of The Gurdjieff Journal©, the only international quarterly devoted to exploring the ancient teaching of The Fourth Way brought and embodied by G. I. Gurdjieff.