  We discuss the principles underlying higher spin glueball calculations on the
lattice. For that purpose, we develop numerical techniques to rotate Wilson
loops by arbitrary angles in lattice gauge theories close to the continuum. As
a first application, we compute the glueball spectrum of the SU(2) gauge theory
in 2+1 dimensions for both parities and for spins ranging from 0 up to 4
inclusive. We measure glueball angular wave functions directly, decomposing
them in Fourier modes and extrapolating the Fourier coefficients to the
continuum. This allows a reliable labelling of the continuum states and gives
insight into the way rotation symmetry is recovered. As one of our results, we
demonstrate that the D=2+1 SU(2) glueball conventionally labelled as J^P = 0^-
is in fact 4^- and that the lightest ``J=1'' state has, in fact, spin 3.
