The conception of left as darkness is really pertinent at my advice. Just one can think over the right hand of God in the Bible( not of Maradona if there are English friends
). Also the name right for "right"/proper has been matter of rivers of ink in several anthropological studies. Starting a walking with the left, in the darkness symbolizes at my advice much more. The candidate want to see the light and starts ALWAYS from the darkness, so starting the walking is a metaphor for starting the "way", the trip, the adventure of the human transformation. For instance Dante goes down to the hell, then the purgatory, in the end in the paradise. Plato starts the Republic going down to the Piraeus( here there is a really interesting military concept linked to Xenophon Anabasis), Ancient initiations were starting in the darkness, so Freemasons have to visit at the beginning of their travel interior lands( Visita Interiore Terrae). Then we could think over the trip of Ulysses and Aeneas in the Aedes. Then in the royal alchemy the process starts from the darkness, the so called nigredo, the putrefaction. Then there is the role of the Crypt in some degrees of the Freemasonry. For instance without going into the York rite, Christian Rosenkreuz according most of the myths had engraved on his crypt the word VITRIOL, doubling the meaning of the importance to travel in the darkness. Here one possibly should make some possibly essential remarks regarding the emulation ritual of FC and the number five, and how this is relate to the walking in the darkness of the EA, that as was mentioned start the perambulation from the left foot, and is blindfolded( in the darkness). Plumb and Level. Other interesting remarks that cannot do for time constraint relate to the starting from the left in the Chinese tradition. In the martial arts usually the form start always from the left side. Then should be said that in the Christian tradition people tend to locate the past on the left side, for some conditioning due to the way we write from left to right, and so we should discuss about the origin of the freemasonry, and the importance of the past in all the worldwide initiations(a concept similar to Karma). There is a beautiful movie where the concept of darkness is inspired to Heart of Darkness, a novel, is called apocalypse now and maybe is a causality, maybe not, also has some strong references to the army.