Blood Meridian's Epilogue - The Five Elements & the I Ching

BM's Epilogue:
In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.

*****

There are many interpretations of this, and I adhere to quite a few myself. The latest one I heard (revealed by a poster in The Cormac McCarthy Society Forum) is from McCarthy himself, who in his notes wrote that this is intended to be a burial scene. But anyone who thinks this fully answers the question, that the game is now up, is taking too much of McCarthy's word for granted. So, let me throw in my latest theory. This one, once again, is from left field, where I reside. Oh, let me just call this my "Five Elements and I Ching" theory.

It starts with the funny business of the steel drawing the fire out of the rock. Fire is the characteristic element of this novel, and in the Epilogue fire is involved with two other elements: metal and earth. At the beginning of BM, fire is already involved with the other two elements: wood and water. The supporting order or production cycle of the elements is indicated by the circumference of the pentagram in the direction of the arrows:

Water supports/produces wood, which in turn supports/produces fire (indeed, fire's "folks are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water"), while fire supports/produces earth, which in turn supports/produces metal (image of steel over rock with fire within). So, the five elements, in their supporting order or production cycle, provide yet another unity of the beginning and ending of BM.

Each of the eight trigrams of the I Ching has an association with an element:
fire(☲) trigram with fire element;
water(☵) trigram with water element;
earth(☷) and mountain(☶) trigrams with earth element;
wind(☴) and thunder(☳) trigrams with wood element;
and, heaven(☰) and lake(☱) trigrams with metal element.

So, using this scheme, we could generate hexagrams of the image of the steel (metal) drawing the fire (fire) out of the rock (earth). Before, fire is innermost, then earth, and metal is outermost; afterwards, earth is innermost, then fire, and metal is still outermost. In hexagram construction, two trigrams are combined, with the top trigram representing the outer, and the bottom trigram the inner.

Here is the arrangement for the afterwards scenario:
relative position -- element -- trigram(s)
outermost or top -- metal -- heaven(☰) or lake(☱)
middle -- fire -- fire(☲)
innermost or bottom -- earth -- earth(☷) or mountain(☶)

[Note: This arrangement conjures the image of the heaven above, the earth below, and the fire moving between; this is coherent with Gnostic and Hermetic readings.]

This arrangement generates eight possible hexagrams:
structure -- hexagram number -- hexagram name (Wilhelm/Baynes version)
heaven(☰) over fire(☲) -- 13 -- Fellowship With Men
lake(☱) over fire(☲) -- 49 -- Revolution (Molting)
fire(☲) over earth(☷) -- 35 -- Progress
fire(☲) over mountain(☶) -- 56 -- The Wanderer
heaven(☰) over earth(☷) -- 12 -- Standstill [Stagnation]
heaven(☰) over mountain(☶) -- 33 -- Retreat
lake(☱) over earth(☷) -- 45 -- Gathering Together [Massing]
lake(☱) over mountain(☶) -- 31 -- Influence (Wooing)

[Note: "Fellowship With Men" is in the sense of "Sameness With Others" and "Sameness With People" (Cleary version).]

A major theme of BM is birth/death/rebirth, which the protagonist experiences not only when he is born and when he dies, but also when his name changes -- from child to kid, from kid to man. The first two hexagrams we've encountered before:

When the child dies to become the kid in Chapter 1, he is on a boat to Texas, where "[t]he passengers are a diffident lot" and he is just "a pilgrim among others", echoing I Ching's "Fellowship With Men". Also, we are told at the beginning that he is born on the night of major Leonid showers, and the image of this same I Ching is "Heaven together with fire".

When the kid dies to become the man in Chapter 22, he sees a "fire in the lake", the exact words found in the image of I Ching's "Revolution (Molting)". He is called "kid" one last time at the end of this chapter, again among pilgrims, all dead this time; the eldress at the rocks, a mere shell, reinforces the image of "molting".

The protagonist's death leads directly to the Epilogue, and here the fun continues with the I Ching. The remaining six hexagrams above should seem very familiar to anyone who has read the entirety of the five-sentence Epilogue many times, because three of those I Ching names are used verbatim in the Epilogue, and the other three are represented by synonyms!:

In the Epilogue, the three people or groups: "man progressing", "wanderers" (who "cross in their progress"), and "gatherers" ("and those who do not gather"), correspond to "Progress", "The Wanderer", and "Gathering Together" of the I Ching.

In the Epilogue, "move haltingly" and "appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness" are synonymous with "Standstill" and "Stagnation" of the I Ching; "escapement", not just a watch mechanism term, is synonymous with "Retreat"; and "sequence and causality" are synonymous with "Influence".

BM's Epilogue, with the five elements and I Ching senses underlined for emphasis, looks like this:
In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.