Year of the Goat
The Goat, also called the Sheep or the Ram, is the eighth animal, the one that crossed the river on a raft with the Monkey and the Rooster. The popular tradition reads it as gentle, artistic and peaceable.
What the postcard says
The popular reading of a Goat year birth is a kind and creative nature: a feeling for beauty, a sympathy for other people, and a preference for harmony over winning. Goats are read as generous, easy-going and quietly persistent, the ones who make the place pleasant and notice when someone is unhappy.
The honest shadow in the same tradition is the Goat's dependence: a worry that needs reassurance, an indecision that waits for someone else to choose, and a pessimism that settles in when it is not tended. The tradition keeps the softness and the anxiety together.
The years, the hours and the month
Every twelfth year is a Goat year, but not the same Goat: the year's stem changes each time, so the Goat years are 1943 (Yin Water), 1955 (Yin Wood), 1967 (Yin Fire), 1979 (Yin Earth), 1991 (Yin Metal), 2003 (Yin Water), 2015 (Yin Wood) and 2027 (Yin Fire). The year turns at Li Chun, around 4 February, not on 1 January and not at the new moon festival, so a January birth belongs to the year before. The branch also rules two hours of every day, 13:00 to 15:00, and one month of every year.
Inside a Four Pillars chart the Goat is the branch Wei, whose element is Earth and whose hidden stems are Yin Earth, Yin Fire and Yin Wood. It rules the two hours after one in the afternoon and the last month of summer. In a chart it reads as dry, warm Earth holding Fire and Wood; the animal name says none of that, and the element does.
The year animal is the postcard; your day master is the reading
Two people born in 2003 and 2015 are both Goats, and the tradition reads them differently before it reads them alike.
The animal is the branch of the year pillar, one of eight characters in a Four Pillars chart, and the tradition reads it last. It reads the day master first: the stem of the day of birth, which is the self the rest of the chart is weighed against, and which the year animal says nothing about. Two Goats twelve years apart share a branch and differ in their year's element, Yin Water against Yin Wood, and differ in every other pillar; the postcard is true, and it is the smallest true thing on the card.
We calculate the whole chart, so the animal is the first thing you see and the day master is the second, and the reading is built on the second. The ten day masters have their own pages in this library, and the calculator says which one is yours.
About 60 seconds · the pillars need your date, time and place · the year animal is the first thing you will see
Questions people ask
Which years are the Goat?
1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003, 2015 and 2027, each beginning at Li Chun, around 4 February, and each with a different element: 1979 (Yin Earth), 1991 (Yin Metal), 2003 (Yin Water), 2015 (Yin Wood) and 2027 (Yin Fire). The calculator works the year out from the date rather than from the year number, so a January birth is placed correctly.
Is the Goat compatible with the Pig and the Rabbit?
The popular tradition groups the Goat with the Pig and the Rabbit, the three branches four apart, and calls the grouping harmonious. That is the postcard's compatibility, two characters out of the sixteen a real pair comparison reads, and it says nothing about the day masters the tradition actually compares. The two-person report reads both charts in full.
I was born in January or February. Which animal am I?
The year turns at Li Chun, around 4 February, so a birth before it belongs to the year before, whatever the calendar says. In some years the festival falls before Li Chun and in some after, which is why two sources can disagree; the pillars follow the solar term, and so does the calculator.
We read charts for pattern and coherence, not prediction. Nothing here tells you what will happen, and nothing here tells you who you are; it shows a structure and leaves the judgement with you.