From Oxford Dictionary:
"In a direction contrary to the sun's course, considered as unlucky; anticlockwise."
From Wikipedia:
"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).
"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 sunwise) 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'.
"Many individuals prefer the word 'widdershins' over its alternatives, chiefly 'counter-clockwise', as not only is the abbreviation for 'counter-clockwise' 'c', the same letter as the abbreviation of its primary antonym, 'clockwise', it has also been noted that the word 'widdershins' is fun to say. (emphasis is my own -ed.)
"The opposite of widdershins is deisul meaning clockwise."
From Wikipedia:
"Anathema, in common usage, is something or someone that is detested or shunned. In its other main usage, it is a formal excommunication. The latter meaning, its ecclesiastical sense, is based on New Testament usage. In the Old Testament, anathema referred either to something (living or inanimate) that was consecrated or something denounced as evil or accursed and set aside for sacrificial offering.
"Anathema derives from Ancient Greek: anáthema, meaning 'an offering' or 'anything dedicated', itself derived from the verb, anatíthēmi, meaning 'to offer up'. In the Old Testament, it referred to both objects consecrated to divine use and those dedicated to destruction in the Lord's name, such as enemies and their weapons during religious wars. Since weapons of the enemy were considered unholy, the meaning became 'anything dedicated to evil' or 'a curse'.
"The Old Testament applied the word to anything set aside for sacrifice, and thus banned from profane use and dedicated to destruction—as, in the case of religious wars, the enemy and their cities and possessions. The New Testament uses the word to mean a curse and forced expulsion of someone from the Christian community.
"Although in the canons of ecumenical councils the word 'anathema' continued to be used to mean exclusion for heresy from the society of the faithful, the word was also used to signify a major excommunication inflicted with particular solemnity. Anathema in this sense was a major excommunication pronounced with the ceremonies described in the article 'bell, book, and candle', which were reserved for the gravest crimes
"The ceremony traditionally involved a bishop, with 12 priests with candles, and is solemnly pronounced in some suitably conspicuous place. The bishop would then pronounce the formula of the anathema. After this recitation the priests would respond: Fiat, fiat, fiat ('So be it! So be it! So be it!') The bishop would then ring a bell, close a holy book, and he and the assisting priests would snuff out their candles by dashing them to the ground."
From Wikipedia:
"Petrichor is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek petra, meaning 'stone', and īchōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.
"The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian CSIRO researchers, Isabel Joy Bear and Richard G. Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature. In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of certain actinobacteria, which is emitted by wet soil, producing the distinctive scent; ozone may also be present if there is lightning.
"When a raindrop lands on a porous surface, air from the pores forms small bubbles, which float to the surface and release aerosols. Such aerosols carry the scent, as well as bacteria and viruses from the soil. Raindrops that move at a slower rate tend to produce more aerosols; this serves as an explanation for why the petrichor is more common after light rains."
From Wikipedia:
"Thaumaturgy is the capability of a magician or a saint to work magic or miracles. Isaac Bonewits defined thaumaturgy as 'the use of magic for nonreligious purposes; the art and science of "wonder working;" using magic to actually change things in the physical world.'
"Kings of France and England were also called thaumaturges, as they were traditionally considered able to heal scrofula.
"The word was first anglicized and used in the magical sense in John Dee's book Mathematicall Praeface to Euclid's Elements (1570). He mentions an 'art mathematical' called 'thaumaturgy... which giveth certain order to make strange works, of the sense to be perceived and of men greatly to be wondered at.'
"In Dee's time, 'the Mathematicks' referred not merely to the abstract computations associated with the term today, but to physical mechanical devices which employed mathematical principles in their design. These devices, operated by means of compressed air, springs, strings, pulleys or levers, were seen by unsophisticated people (who did not understand their working principles) as magical devices which could only have been made with the aid of demons and devils.
"By building such mechanical devices, Dee earned a reputation as a conjurer 'dreaded' by neighborhood children. He complained of this assessment in his 'Mathematicall Praeface': 'And for these, and such like marvellous Actes and Feates, Naturally, and Mechanically, wrought and contrived: ought any honest Student and Modest Christian Philosopher, be counted, & called a Conjurer? Shall the folly of Idiotes, and the Malice of the Scornfull, so much prevaille ... Shall that man, be (in hugger mugger) condemned, as a Companion of the hellhoundes, and a Caller, and Conjurer of wicked and damned Spirites?'"
