Entertainment / Literature / Gyre: (Latin gyrus, a spiral) A gyre is a spiral or circular motion. W. B. Yeats uses the image of a gyre in 'The Second Coming' as his private symbol for the forces of history, taking the idea from medieval falconry. There, the falconer normally allowed the bird to circle outward in increasing distances, but he could not let it spiral out so far that it can no longer hear his commands. In the same way, Yeats thought of history as occuring in two-thousand year cycles, and thought that one such cycle was about to end in the twentieth century. Thus, his image for a world going out of control was that of a falcon moving too far away from the center or the falconer, which might represent God, tradition, morality, or some similar principle. (Note the word gyre is pronounced with an initial /j/ sound, compare with the pronunciation of gyroscope and gyrfalcon.)
Search Google for Gyre:
Science / Tides and Currents / Sargasso Sea: The west central region of the sub-tropical gyre of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is bounded by the North Atlantic, Canary, North Equatorial, and Antilles Currents, and the Gulf Stream. It is character MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Private Symbol: In contrast with an archetype (universal symbol), a private symbol is one that an individual artist arbitrarily assigns a personal meaning to. Nearly all members of an ethnic, religious, or linguistic MORE