Widdershins

Widdershins (sometimes withershins, widershins or widderschynnes) is a term meaning to go counter-clockwise, to go anti-clockwise, or to go lefthandwise, or to walk around an object by always keeping it on the left. i.e. literally, it means to take a course opposite the apparent motion of the sun viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, (the centre of this imaginary clock is the ground the viewer stands upon). The Oxford English Dictionary's entry cites the earliest uses of the word from 1513, where it was found in the phrase widdersyns start my hair, i.e. my hair stood on end.

The use of the word also means "in a direction opposite to the usual", and in a direction contrary to the apparent course of the sun. It is cognate with the German language widersinnig, i.e., "against" + "sense". The term "widdershins" was especially common in Lowland Scots.

Widdershins comes from Middle Low German weddersinnes, literally "against the way" (i.e. "in the opposite direction"), from widersinnen "to go against," from Old High German elements widar "against" and sinnen "to travel, go," related to sind "journey".

Because the sun played a highly important role in older religions, to go against it was considered bad luck for sun-worshiping traditions.

It was considered unlucky in Britain to travel in an anticlockwise (not 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 novels The Nine Tailors (chapter entitled The Second Course; "He turned to his right, knowing that it is unlucky to walk about a church widdershins, ...") and Clouds of Witness ("True, O King, and as this isn't a church, there's no harm in going round it widdershins"). In Robert Louis Stevenson's tale, "The Song of the Morrow," an old crone on the beach dances "widdershins".

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Wikipedia