"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."
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