Increase and decrease - the mystery of circles

I read a blog post some months back, which belittled the concepts of deosil (sunwise) and widdershins (the opposite of sunwise) in a Pagan forum because the author argued that they are arbitrary and contingent on one’s perspective.

The principle of doing creative and manifesting work deosil and diminishing or banishing work widdershins is one of the the classic Wiccan things that immediately appealed to me when I first encountered it. I adopted it many years ago and it is now deeply encoded in my practice.

So what did this author mean? Of course, deosil and widdershins are solid concepts, like right and left or up and down, are they not?

And yet… in the mirror, right is left. And in Australia, down is my up.

My brain does this, even when I would rather it didn’t. When it hears an opposing view, instead of comfortably engaging confirmation bias and just dismissing things I don’t want to hear about, my mind starts fiddling with them like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to decode every last scrap of real testable data. The result has been several significant changes in belief during my lifetime, but now I am reasonably confident that most of what I believe is well founded, because my monkey mind doesn’t find as many holes as it used to.

Creative Commons image by Eyenumo of Flickr.com.

But in this case, it did find a hole.

Walk a deosil circle. Then lie down on the floor in the middle of your circle. Now point to where you walked the deosil circle and trace the circle with your finger, while lying on your back on the floor. Raise your finger and keep drawing the circle above you. And suddenly you realize, you are drawing a widdershins circle. How did that happen?

What is deosil to a person casting a circle is widdershins to the earth or to a person lying on the earth in the circle. Just like left and right or up and down, deosil and widdershins are a matter of perspective.

Does that mean that they are meaningless and useless in energetic practice, as some authors claim?

While I have come to agree with those who say deosil and widdershins are a matter of perspective, I still believe they matter.

Do right and left matter? They certainly do if you’re driving on a highway. Try driving on the right side of the road in the UK or on the left in most other countries, and you would quickly learn that matters of perspective can be matters of life and death.

Deosil and widdershins may well matter in much the same way. I cast a circle deosil to work my will to bring financial increase for my family. But that has got to come from somewhere. While this is magic, it is not a parlor trick. I can’t actually produce a rabbit from thin air and if I did, there would be.the equivalent of a rabbit subtracted somewhere else.

The laws of physics dictate that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. Our magic is not above that. When there is increase, there must also be decrease. When I see increase, it will mean decrease from another perspective. Often it is the earth that gives and from the perspective of the earth, my deosil is widdershins.

When I let some unneeded part of my coping mechanisms die, when I shed something negative, I walk widdershins. And as with most dead things, that which I cast off goes back to the earth. To the earth, my widdershins is deosil. What I cast off is fertilizer for new growth.

There is no deosil without widdershins, no widdershins without deosil.

This does not mean that deosil and widdershins do not matter. They matter as much as right and left on the roadway. Examining the argument has ironically lead me to agree with the critics technically, but confirmed the importance of the concept at the core. Going with the sun to bring things to fruition makes good sense.

Hurricanes also appear to believe in this law. In the northern hemisphere, they destroy as they whirl widdershins or counter-clockwise. But this raises one significant point, that was mentioned in passing by critical authors. In the southern hemisphere the sun’s path appears to be the opposite of that in the north. And from a satellite hurricanes in the southern hemisphere appear to turn clockwise.

Does this completely negate the entire concept of deosil and widdershins? As far as I am concerned it does not. But it does mean something very important for those in the southern hemisphere, whether they are there permanently or as temporary visitors. Deosil means “sunrise,” not clockwise. It doesn’t matter which way the clocks developed in the northern hemisphere go.

The sun in the southern hemisphere curves counter-clockwise. Therefore in the south counter-clockwise is deosil. It is not so much that the concept doesn’t hold, but that we actually need to pay attention to which way the sun appears to move across the sky.

Therefore, I will continue to use the concepts of deosil and widdershins, though perhaps in a more mindful way.. And I would love to dance an infinity symbol or figure 8 someday on the equator.

Reciprocity is the law of life We would do well to remember it. The next time you walk deosil to bring some new abundance into your life, think on the widdershins dance that it creates under you. It may be possible to influence where and how the corresponding decrease happens. But decrease must come hand in hand with increase.