Literally, it means to take a course opposite the apparent motion of the sun viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. Widdershins is cognate with the German widersinnig, i.e., “against” + “sense”. The opposite of widdershins is deosil, or sunwise, meaning “clockwise”.
Huh, I wonder if I read terry pratchett many years ago. I keep trying to get into that now but the hold queue at my library is insane.
Anyway, I stopped to say I remember reading “widens” as a term in some book long ago, but not the context …. Maybe this is the context