Widdershins

Widdershins (sometimes withershins, widershins or widderschynnes) is a term meaning to go counter-clockwise, anti-clockwise, or lefthandwise, or to walk around an object by always keeping it on the left.

Literally, it means to take a course opposite the apparent motion of the sun viewed from the Northern Hemisphere (the face of this imaginary clock is the ground the viewer stands upon).

[1] The earliest recorded use of the word, as cited by the Oxford English Dictionary, is in a 1513 translation of the Aeneid, where it is found in the phrase "Abaisit I wolx, and widdersyns start my hair."

[3][4] 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; for example, in the fairy tale Childe Rowland, the protagonist and his sister are transported to Elfland after the sister runs widdershins round a church.