[time-nuts] Widdershins

[Jim Lux]

On 6/26/12 11:05 AM, Bill Hawkins wrote:
> Around 1530, it was considered very bad luck to walk around a church
> widdershins (see the Wikipedia article). I think it goes back earlier
> than that, to a time well before clocks.
>
> If widdershins means counter-clockwise, how did they know which way
> clocks ran?

Widdershins (or it's opposite, deosil) doesn't really refer to clockwise 
or counterclockwise, it refers to turning left or turning right. Turning 
left (sinister, gauche) is clearly a bad plan.

Aleister Crowley (noted Himalayan mountaineer and the wickedest man 
alive) has a whole pile of explanation of this in "Magick"

I don't think this is necessarily sundial related, but if you stand in 
the doorway looking generally south, the sun appears to move from left 
to right (in the northern hemisphere, which is all the civilized world 
had when these words were invented)..

widdershins derives from Middle low german weddersines from Middle High 
German widersinnes, wider=back + sinnes=in the direction of

deosil is apparently from Scottish roots in turn from Latin dexter.


(I found out all about this back when reading "the Nine Tailors", but 
then, Sayers did have a classical education, and the term dates back 
quite far.  OED has it in 1513)


>
> The answer lies in northern hemisphere sundials. When clocks with
> faces were invented, they ran in the same direction as the shadow
> of the gnomon on a sundial.
>
> Widdershins also means anti-sunwise, which would be blasphemous to
> people that used to believe that the sun was a powerful god.
>
> There's lots of angles to this time stuff.
>
> Bill Hawkins
>
>
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