GR translation: the mark of Youthful Folly

[Michael Bailey]

Mark covered this but I want to add some details.

Youthful Folly is I Ching Hexagram 4

https://www.iching-online.com/hexagrams/iching-hexagram-100010.html

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I Ching was big amongst hippies.

In the novel “DR’s trip” that appeared in _The Last Whole Earth
Catalog_, the iconic hippie DR was always casting the I Ching for
guidance as he piloted his VW van - and getting pissed with
unsatisfactory readings & casting again (“Hexagram 12 - Stagnation!
Not again - it’s a sin to reject a reading but I can’t have Stagnation
again!” Or words to that effect.”)

As with Tarot and astrology, it seems like it puts a lot of
significance into some pretty insignificant stuff - but one of those
things that people get out of them what they put into them (although
if they do, their experience was different from mine (-;)

It might be that a more “pixilated” state of mind would find a lot to
like in the I Ching?


 - as such, it gets folded into GR as part of the Counterforce in
Pirate’s mindset and “his chroniclers” use it with the same
seriousness that an Establishment commentator or biographer would talk
about his parentage, educational background, etc -


Depending on one’s orientation, you could take this as Pynchon playing
for comic effect, or satirizing the Counterforce (but “whom the lord
loveth, he chastiseth”) or filling up the complement of lore in order
to make GR more encyclopedic.


Mark Kohut sez:

This brings us to the hexagram of Transformation of Youthful Folly. The
undeveloped mind of youthful folly tries to put itself in charge of
everything, rather than seeing the relationship of the seven levels as
governed by the ...

*Wilhelm/Baynes:**Youthful Folly* has success. It is not I who seek the
young fool; the young fool seeks me. At the first oracle I inform him. If
he asks two or three times, it is importunity. If he importunes, I give him
no information. Perseverance furthers.

On Sat, Apr 16, 2022 at 7:36 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at
gmail.com <https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>>
wrote:

>* V12.38-13.2, P13.13-17   The scenes are highlights from Pirate’s career as
*>* a fantasist-surrogate, and go back to when he was carrying, everywhere he
*>* went, the mark of Youthful Folly growing in an unmistakable Mongoloid
*>* point, right out of the middle of his head.
*>>* Here, is "the mark of Youthful Folly" the "Mongoloid point" itself, or is
*>* it actually a hexagram or whatever growing inside said Mongoloid point? I
*>* find the latter scenario strange and unlikely, but that's just me.
*>>* I thought this sentence is just a funny way of saying when Pirate was young
*>* and inexperienced, is that correct?*