W. B. Yeats’s A Vision (1925)
The Great Wheel in A Vision
The Great Wheel is a central organising image in the first A Vision. A numbered circle, lunar faces and a four-part interior make a visual system for the book’s account of human types. In the opening exposition Yeats says that the twenty-eight phases serve classification and that their symbols are composed arbitrarily for that purpose. He distinguishes a first phase figured as full Sun, a fifteenth as full Moon, and half-and-half positions at eight and twenty-two. The artwork and prose are read together here; the wheel is not introduced as an instrument for measuring the physical Moon or predicting a reader’s future.
Also known as Yeats’s Great Wheel
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In the sources
A visual arrangement
DocumentedThe plate combines twenty-eight numbered positions with dark and light lunar faces and a divided centre.
Classification is explicitly constructed
DocumentedThe opening exposition identifies classification as the purpose of the phase symbols and describes their composition as arbitrary.
Context & interpretation
This entry follows the complete edition of A Vision dated 1925 held in the Reader. It does not import revisions from the substantially different 1937 version. The terminology describes Yeats’s literary and esoteric model; references to types, faculties, phases or history are attributed to that model rather than presented as established psychology, astronomy or historical laws.
Original passages
Source 1
A Vision
The Great WheelOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Preliminary plate captioned The Great Wheel
Actual checksum-verified active Reader scan inspected. Short quotation transcribed from the scan; line breaks and spacing normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0374-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0374-E001-P0012
- Original scan leaf
- 15
- Recorded leaf number
- 15
- Current Reader position
- 13
- Reader verification
- Matches the reviewed Reader
Source 2
A Vision
their symbols are composed in an entirely arbitrary wayOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Book I, The Great Wheel, Part I, section I, printed p. 12
Actual checksum-verified active Reader scan inspected. Short quotation transcribed from the scan; line breaks and spacing normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0374-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0374-E001-P0032
- Original scan leaf
- 37
- Recorded leaf number
- 37
- Current Reader position
- 33
- Reader verification
- Matches the reviewed Reader
Illustrations
Continue exploring
Primary and Antithetical in A Vision
The contrasting objective and subjective tendencies that Yeats calls the two Tinctures.
Shared illustrationThe Four Faculties in A Vision
Will, Mask, Creative Mind and Body of Fate: the four interacting faculties in Yeats’s 1925 model.
Same subject and traditionThe Historical Cones in A Vision
The red-and-black diagram that aligns dates, phases and historical Faculties in Yeats’s first A Vision.