Against the Grain: Walking Widdershins

Magick and manifestation can be found in broad strokes or minute details—from the swish and flick of a wand to a stray bubble of thought drifting through the mind, the direction you open and close a circle, clear and cleanse a space, stir a brew, or sweep a broom.

Traditionally, the “proper” way to do these things is to activate deosil and banish widdershins. Widdershins means going against or in the direction opposite the motion of the sun across the sky. It is anticlockwise, counterclockwise. Deosil is the opposite, following the path of the sun clockwise across the sky.

Deosil can mean doing things the "right" or "correct" way, in a "natural" direction, following the social conventions and norms already paved by tradition. Widdershins, then, is the counter-culture, the unconventional way, and the direction not set by the path of tradition, society, or the sun.

Naturally and instinctively, I set my magicks into motion widdershins.

I stir widdershins. I cleanse spaces widdershins.

I walk boundaries widdershins.

Going widdershins is to go against the expectations already set by external and internal forces.

As a witch, I walk a widdershins path to what was—until recently—a traditional convention in spiritual practice. Practicing witchcraft has been a widdershins path for most of recorded history. As a woman, I live an alternative life following my own widdershins way and whims, choosing scholarship and career over the previously expected role of a woman.

Traditionally, the widdershins direction is associated with cursing, hexing, and misfortune. Walking widdershins around a building or person was considered bad luck. Looking back on recorded history, it’s easy to see why this association existed. To be or perform any task, role, or duty contrary to the accepted and expected ways set you out as an outsider who could be easily targeted as a scapegoat or worse.

Unfortunately, this can still be true.

Modern practitioners and resources encourage moving widdershins to undo magickal actions, opening a closed circle, banishing ill-intended energy and malicious magicks. Widdershins has been reduced to little more than deosil’s opposite, rather than a mechanism for sacred movement in its own right.

However, widdershins’ power is capable of so much more.

With a circle drawn first in widdershins or even by taking a walking meditation following the widdershins direction, I summon courage, bravery, and creative outside-the-box thinking. I perform self-love and beauty quest magicks. I stir my brewed beverages, soups, stews, and sauces widdershins to tap into tap into the energies and potential of the ingredients and meld them together a delicious bit of kitchen magick.

Widdershins can be used for so much more than tradition or modern resources dictate and it is up to our imaginations and interpretations, our perspectives.