Goat

Meaning

The Goat is the eighth of the twelve animals, the animal of the branch Wei: Earth, yin, the last month of summer and the early afternoon, when fruit gains its flavour. The Chinese word 羊 yáng names the goat and the sheep alike, which is why books in English call it the Goat, the Sheep or the Ram; whichever it is, it is the gentlest of the twelve, and an animal of good omen: the character sits inside 美, beauty, and was once written for 祥, good fortune.

Ulune’s portrait reads it as gentle, artistic and kind: it feels the moods around it and answers them with care; it thrives in beauty and peace and gives its best when it feels safe. Its gifts are compassion, creativity, tact and a peaceful presence. What the tradition asks it to watch is the other side of its sensitivity: worry and indecision, and leaning on others when it could trust itself.

Its branch is a storehouse, the warm, dry earth of high summer that keeps the Wood of the year, and the Goat is read as a keeper of good things: a home made comfortable, a talent cultivated, a kindness that lasts. Its phase is Earth, care and steadiness, with a little Fire and Wood inside it, the warmth and the growth it shelters.

In practice

• As the year animal, the Goat is how others see a person and the generation they share: those born from Lichun 2027 to Lichun 2028 will be Fire Goats, from Lichun 2015 to Lichun 2016 they were Wood Goats.
• As the inner, true and secret animal: as the month animal, Ulune reads the Goat’s tenderness inside, a feeling for beauty and for other people’s needs; as the day animal, a partner caring and devoted, who needs security and gentle words; as the hour animal, an artist and a dreamer with a rich inner world.
• The five Goats: the Wood Goat is kind and giving, the Fire Goat the bravest and most expressive, the Earth Goat the steadiest, the Metal Goat hides a firm core under its softness, the Water Goat is the most intuitive. Wood came in 1955 and 2015, Fire in 1967 and comes in 2027, Earth in 1979, Metal in 1991, Water in 2003.
• Its relations: the Goat’s allies are the Pig and the Rabbit, its trine of Wood; its partner in harmony is the Horse. It clashes with the Ox, harms the Rat, belongs to the punishment of power with the Ox and the Dog, and forms a destruction with the Dog.
• In time: the Goat’s own years return every twelve, 2027 and 2039; an Ox year such as 2033 is its clash year; a Horse year such as 2026 is its year of harmony, and the Pig and Rabbit years its allied ones.

Across traditions

• In Japan the animal is the sheep, hitsuji; in Korea yang; in Vietnam the goat, dê, of the branch Mùi. Guangzhou is called the City of Rams after a legend of five immortals who rode in on rams carrying ears of rice.
• A New Year pun wishes 三陽開泰, “three yang open the way to peace”, and paints it as three goats, since 羊 and 陽 sound alike: the first month’s hexagram is Peace, with three yang lines below.
• In Europe the lamb is the image of gentleness and the ram that of Aries, a fire sign of spring; the Goat of China, gentle and summery, is closer to the lamb than to the ram.

Origin and history

The Goat is the animal of Wei in Wang Chong’s Lunheng, in the 1st century, which gives Chou to the ox and Wei to the goat, both Earth. Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) explains 美, beauty, as a big sheep, and 羊 as 祥, good fortune, which tells how highly the animal was valued: sheep were among the offerings of the great sacrifices, and a gift of lamb a mark of respect.

BaZi’s classics read the branch Wei, a storehouse of Wood, rather than the Goat itself. The Goat’s portrait as it is known now, the gentle artist who needs peace, is that of popular books of the 20th century in Chinese, English and French, such as Theodora Lau’s Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes (1979).

How Ulune calculates it

The Goat is the branch Wei: a year, month, day or hour whose pillar’s branch is Wei is a Goat. Ulune counts the Goat year from Lichun and gives the other answer when Chinese New Year would differ; the Goat month runs from Xiaoshu, about 7 July, to Liqiu in early August; the Goat hour from 13:00 to 15:00 on true solar time. On Ulune’s wheel the Goat stands at the south-south-west, just after the Horse. Ulune reads the harmony of the Horse and the Goat as making Fire and says that some books make it Earth. Its portraits, with its five phases and its places, are Ulune’s own texts, written from what popular books commonly say.

Correspondences