A group defined by a finite presentation with cyclic symmetry admits a shift automorphism that is periodic and word-length preserving. It is shown that if the presentation is combinatorially aspherical and orientable, in the sense that no relator is a cyclic permutation of the inverse of any of its shifts, then the shift acts freely on the non-identity elements of the group presented. For cyclic presentations defined by positive words of length at most three, the shift defines a free action if and only if the presentation is combinatorially aspherical and the shift itself is fixed point free if and only if the group presented is infinite.