In Northern Europe, people would refer to the direction of the sun - indicating a direction was either "sunwise" or "against the sun": In the north, if one faces south to watch the path the sun takes, it moves in an arc that moves from the left to the right - "sunwise" or in today's term "clockwise." Clocks moved in the direction of the sun because that was the preferred, "safe" direction. Moving against the sun - today's counterclockwise" - was regarded as going again the natural order of things. It was potentially dangerous in magical terms to do things - stirring food or walking around a church - in a direction that was "against the sun."