Widdershins

Widdershins, also written withershins, widershins, or widderschynnes, refers to movement in a counterclockwise direction, especially in ritual, magical, folkloric, and ceremonial contexts. In Western magical tradition, it is usually understood as movement against the course of the sun, in contrast to deosil, which means movement clockwise or sunwise.

The word is old and linguistically complex. Merriam-Webster traces it through older Germanic roots meaning “against” and “to travel,” and defines it as movement in a left-handed, contrary, or counterclockwise direction. The word came to be associated with movement opposite to the apparent path of the sun and, over time, with misfortune, inversion, and magical reversal.

In magical and folkloric usage, widdershins is not simply “left” or “counterclockwise.” It is symbolic movement against the ordinary, accepted, solar, or life-affirming current. For this reason, it has often been associated with undoing, breaking, banishing, binding, reversing, cursing, and contact with chthonic or necromantic forces.

The Irish equivalent is often given as tuathal or tuatal, meaning a leftward or contrary turning. In Irish and Scottish folklore, such movement could be considered unlucky, improper, or spiritually dangerous. To move against the sun was to move against the natural order. It was not merely a physical direction, but an act of symbolic opposition.

In traditional magical practice, widdershins movement may be used in workings intended to remove, diminish, separate, banish, bind, or reverse. A practitioner might move widdershins around a person, object, altar, house, grave, boundary, or ritual circle when the aim is not to attract or bless, but to undo or drive something away. In older witchcraft lore, witches and sorcerers were sometimes said to circle a house widdershins when casting harmful magic against its occupants.

This association with harmful magic is one reason widdershins has sometimes been described as unnatural, unlucky, or negative. However, this interpretation is too narrow. In serious magical study, widdershins should not be reduced to “evil movement.” It is better understood as counter-current motion. It works against an established flow. That may be destructive, but it may also be protective, corrective, cleansing, or necessary.

For example, widdershins may be used to:

Remove unwanted influences
Break attachments
Undo harmful spells
Close spiritual pathways
Reverse hostile magic
Banish intrusive energies
Dismantle a ritual structure
Open a temporary passage in a circle
Work with death, endings, shadows, or ancestral forces

In this sense, widdershins belongs not only to cursing or black magic, but also to the serious magical logic of unmaking. Where deosil builds, blesses, attracts, and seals, widdershins often dissolves, releases, reverses, and clears.

Widdershins also appears in necromantic and chthonic contexts. Because it is movement against the solar current, it is symbolically linked with darkness, descent, the underworld, death, and the hidden side of spiritual work. This does not necessarily make it evil. Rather, it places it within a category of magic concerned with thresholds, endings, spirits, shadows, and the unseen powers beneath ordinary life.

In contemporary Witchcraft and Wicca, widdershins is often used in a more controlled and practical way. A magic circle may be cast deosil to establish sacred space, raise energy, and create protection. If a small opening is needed for entry or exit, some practitioners may cut or open that section of the circle using a widdershins motion with an athame, sword, wand, or hand gesture. The opening may then be closed again deosil to restore the circle’s integrity.

This illustrates an important principle: widdershins does not always destroy the circle. Used correctly, it can open, release, interrupt, or reverse a specific part of the working without collapsing the entire ritual structure. Its meaning depends on intention, tradition, and ritual context.

The opposition between deosil and widdershins is one of the most basic directional concepts in modern magical practice. Deosil is commonly associated with the sun, increase, blessing, growth, attraction, invocation, and the building of power. Widdershins is associated with reversal, decrease, banishing, binding, undoing, shadow work, and the breaking of unwanted patterns.

Yet the two should not be seen as moral opposites. They are ritual directions with different functions. Creation and destruction, opening and closing, blessing and banishing, attraction and release are all part of magical practice. A serious practitioner learns when to move with the current and when to move against it.

Widdershins therefore represents one of the essential movements of witchcraft: the ability to turn away from the ordinary path, step outside the expected order, and work consciously with reversal, endings, boundaries, and release. It is the movement of undoing — and sometimes, undoing is exactly what magic requires.

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Widdershins is one of those terms that looks simple at first, but opens a much deeper door into magical practice.

It teaches one of the most important lessons in witchcraft: magic is not only about attraction, manifestation, and blessing. It is also about banishing, reversing, cutting away, protecting, closing doors, and removing what no longer belongs.

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