Sunwise «vs» Anti-Sunwise

Clockwise, or deosil, is the same as Sunwise: it tracks the Sun’s forward movement through time. Things which are clockwise are a natural progression, a forwarding, and a bringing. It is ‘the prosperous path’.

What is brought? Winter is a natural progression from autumn; going clockwise will bring the biting winter. Go further clockwise and spring comes again. This is the natural progression and forwarding of nature, and the bringing of progress. The land must weep and rest before it is ready to rise again. Prosperity of the land relies on the bringing of the cold darkness.

What is brought need not only be warmth and prosperity like the coming summer. It may be cold and burdensome like the winter. But here’s the trick of it: until the Sun dawns, what it dawns upon may be changed behind the scenes. To employ clockwise motions in a spell is to progress, to forward, and to bring. To agree to the forward march of time – but also modifying what it is that will be revealed with time.

Sunwise work has a great limitation, though: things which Already Are were settled into the deep grooves of reality the moment they came to be. Bound by cause-and-effect, external influences, the likeliest futures, and paths of least resistance, things which exist now can be devilishly hard to change.

Imagine what you could do if you could stop the forward march of time, if you could sink your claws into the earth and create a pocket of Against-It-All, where the forward-progress-bringing flow is stopped. Dead silent and stopped. Where the Sun and Full Moon cannot see you (but the Dark Moon – she can), and progress cannot push you, and the tendrils of future-approaching are frozen and brittle. What might you undo? What might you erase, reform, remake, dissolve in this moment? Well, anything at all.

If the Sun is already shining upon it, and it’s locked into the railroad tracks of cause-and-effect, working counterclockwise, or widdershins, takes it off those tracks. Anti-sunwise draws it back into the shadows, lets it be reworked, reformed, and repositioned before the Sun is allowed to shine upon it and align it back into the waking world.

Sunwise progresses, forwards, and brings.

Anti-Sunwise is a revolt against the tyranny of the present moment. It is dissolution and true transformation. It makes a floater on the eye of the Sun, and in that interlude where her gaze cannot affix things into place, it allows the Witch to do with the moment as they please.

Anti-Sunwise is best employed on things which Are, but ought to be different. Not furthered down their natural track, but put onto a different track. Not aged and seasoned as the Sun turns, but remade into something new and set free in a different forest.

Less poetically, Anti-Sunwise is often used in cleansing because it can dislodge, transform, and banish unwanted energies. It is used in banishing because it can do the same to the fates and actions of people and spirits. It is used when things must be reduced, faded away, or made less prominent– especially in conjunction with the waning and Dark Moon. It is used when a likely future must be erased or transformed (consider that Sunwise adds or bolsters the likelihood of a certain future). It is used to dissolve magics and enchantments.

Anti-Sunwise can also be used to throw off the shackles of the waking world and more easily commune with all spirits, especially the dead and chthonic beings. There is a reason some covens only cast their circles anti-sunwise, and tread sunwise to return the space to its rightful time and place.

However, there is also the consideration of the “Double compass” or “Double Circle” as well, as it pertains to best aligning one’s practice with the land- as the “Double Circle’ is directly based upon the track of the sun through the course of a year.

If you place a stick upright in the ground and take a sighting of the tip of its shadow every day at the same time for a year, you will find it traces a figure eight path with a spiral at each end. One spiral will turn Sunwise, as did its track, and one will turn Anti-Sunwise. The ‘Double Circle’ actively works this pattern into the energies of the seasonal changes and can be worked in several different ways.

• One method is to work a completely laid out Double Compass (two complete circles laid in advance) with the coven moving from one circle to the other at the main points of seasonal change.
• Another means is to change the aspects of the directions within the same circle at the main points of seasonal change, switching a ‘winter’ to a ‘summer’ circle (for instance).
• A third way might be to work the circle Sunwise for half the year and Anti-Sunwise the other half.

One or more of these methods may be employed to mark the turn of the seasons with the Circle, thus aligning it even more closely to the rhythms of the Land in which it is worked.