The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sunwise \Sun"wise`\, adv. In the direction of the sun's apparent motion, or from the east southward and westward, and so around the circle; also, in the same direction as the movement of the hands of a watch lying face upward.
Wiktionary
adv. (context nonstandard English) clockwise.
Wikipedia
In Scottish folklore, Sunwise or Sunward (clockwise) was considered the “prosperous course”, turning from east to west in the direction of the sun. The opposite course was known in Scotland as widdershins ( Lowland Scots), or tuathal ( Scottish Gaelic), and would have been counterclockwise. It is perhaps no coincidence that, in the Northern Hemisphere, "sunwise" and "clockwise" run in the same direction. This is probably because of the use of the sun as a timekeeper on sundials etc., whose features were in turn transferred to clock faces themselves. Another influence may also have been the right-handed bias in many human cultures.
This is descriptive of the ceremony observed by the druids, of walking round their temples by the south, in the course of their directions, always keeping their temples on their right. This course (diasil or deiseal) was deemed propitious, while the contrary course is perceived as fatal, or at least unpropitious. From this ancient superstition are derived several Gaelic customs which were still observed around the turn of the twentieth century, such as drinking over the left thumb, as Toland expresses it, or according to the course of the sun. Wicca uses the spelling deosil, which violates the Gaelic orthography principle that a consonant must be surrounded by either broad vowels (a, o, u) or slender vowels (e, i).
Martin says:
This distinction is also common in traditional Tibetan religion. Tibetan Buddhists go round their shrines sunwise, but followers of Bonpo go widdershins. The former consider Bonpo to be merely a perversion of their practice, but as Bonpo adherents claim that their religion as the indigenous one of Tibet was doing this prior to the arrival of Buddhism in the country.
The Hindu pradakshina - the auspicious circumambulation of a temple, is also made clockwise.
A similar preference may inform the left-hand drive found in England, India, and Japan. Any temple or shrine in the middle of a road must be passed to its left.
Usage examples of "sunwise".
He spoke the words, though, as he turned himself sunwise, murmuring the brief prayer to each of the four airts in turn, and ended facing west, into the setting sun.
A special soul, yet judged as general -- The endless grief of art, the sneer that slays, The war, the wound, the groan, the funeral pall -- Not into these, bright spirit, do we yearn To bring thee back, but oh, to be, to be Unbound of all these gyves, to stretch, to spurn The dark from off our dolorous lids, to see Our spark, Conjecture, blaze and sunwise burn, And suddenly to stand again by thee!
He began to rotate it sunwise, crossing one hand over the other at increasing speed.
Beyond the blazing wall around them Garric saw vortices of light spin sunwise into the night.
The light spun sunwise around them, colours blending, wrenching reality out of Time.
He felt at peace, however, as he watched Joram catch up the severed pieces, and he followed without hesitation as Evaine led him sunwise around the altar to a place in the West, to end up standing on her right.
Evaine passing it to Gregory and on, sunwise, as Joram admonished them to remember those who had gone before and to cherish those now bound in their company.
Dust devils began to spin around the wagon, six of them sunwise and the seventh widdershins.
Three times they marched sunwise around the cottage repeating this, their freezing breath a ghostly herald in the moonlight.
I was still looking around when the bards, at some unseen signal, arranged themselves in ordered ranks and began walking around the base of the mound in a slow, sunwise circle.
This he scattered to the four quartersand to the four quarters between the quartersas he began slowly pacing once more in a sunwise circle around the pillar stone, which is the sacred center of Albion, the Island of the Mighty.
I bluffed, completing the second sunwise circuit of the mound and beginning the third.
We walked a bit further, completing our third sunwise circuit of the mound.
I got three or four of the men to drive the wagon with me, and we went around the city sunwise, left to right, up and over, while he showed us every pass over the surrounding hills and hole through the stone escarpments while the turnips became almost hysterical with anticipation.
It threaded in and out of the circle, moving ever in a sunwise direction.