Widdershins
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Widdershins (sometimes withershins, widershins or widderschynnes) is a word which (usually) means anticlockwise, however in certain circumstances it can be used to refer to a direction which is against the light, i.e. where you are unable to see your shadow. It is cognate with the German language widersinnig, i.e., "against" + "sense". The term "widdershins" was especially common in Lowland Scots, and was known in Scottish Gaelic as tuathal, which uses the same root as tuath meaning "north", the opposite of widdershins is deiseil/sunwise. In the southern hemisphere, the sun goes anti-clockwise, but in the northern hemisphere, it goes clockwise, which is where the term "sunwise" originates from. Because the sun played a highly important role in primitive religion, to go against it was considered very bad luck.
[edit] Superstition and religion
It was considered unlucky in former times in Britain to travel in an anticlockwise (because anti sun wise) direction around a church and a number of folk myths make reference to this superstition, e.g. Childe Rowland, where the protagonist and his sister are transported to Elfland after his sister runs widdershins round a church. There is also a reference to this in Dorothy Sayers's novel The nine tailors.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, however, it is normal for processions around a church to go widdershins.
[edit] Modern usage
The word is frequently used in fiction in incantations etc, as a means of heightening atmosphere on account of the archaic and arcane nature of the word itself.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Widdershins is the opposite of Turnwise, the direction in which the Disc rotates.
The Wiccan Rede states, "Widdershins go when the Moon doth wane / And the werewolf howls by the dread wolfsbane." However, this saying is believed to be of modern provenance (probably from the latter half of the 20th century), and uses consciously archaic language.
[edit] See also
"Widdershins" is the title of a Charles de Lint book set in Newford. The title is both literal and metaphorical. In one situation, the characters walk widdershins around a vortex to return home from the Otherworld. But as the book jacket says, "It's also the way people often back slowly into the relationships that matter, the real ones that make for life."
