A mascot wants a parade. A heading wants a needle that still works when the parade is rained off.
Set a magnetic compass to 42° and you have not chosen a shrine. You have chosen a bearing: northeast-ish, depending on where you are standing and how badly the local iron is lying. Sailors and hikers already treat numbers this way. Forty-two is not sacred; it is simply a mark on a circle that happens to be two times three times seven, which is the sort of coincidence a Guide prefers to a slogan.
Domains once did the same trick in public. A few sites parked themselves at names ending in 42 not because the universe had spoken, but because the number already refused to take itself seriously. Jokes travel farther than creeds. If your heading is a punchline, people remember where they were going even after they forget why they started.
On paper maps the number is almost rude. True north is a ceremony. Magnetic north is a weather report. Forty-two degrees is neither: it is a decision you can reverse without a committee. Face that way long enough and you will still get wet, lost, or both. The point is not salvation. The point is that you picked a direction that will not demand a hymn if you later pick another.
Jackie Robinson wore 42 and the league retired it, which is the opposite of a compass setting: a number frozen so no one else can walk in it. Useful, historic, and slightly too solemn for a hitchhiker’s pocket. Better to keep 42 moving. Washington became the 42nd state and then went on being a place with rain and ferries. Molybdenum sits at atomic number 42 and does not campaign. Rainbows, if you squint at the geometry of refraction, keep offering angles that feel like they ought to mean something and then don’t.
Don't Panic is the same kind of instrument. It is not a mascot either. It is a heading: proceed, keep the towel where you can find it, and do not let the needle freeze on a single glorious answer.
If you must have a ritual, make it this: each morning tap the glass, confirm 42 is still a number and not a personality, and walk. The planet will supply the rest of the joke.