What it means
The Goat is the zodiac's artist. Goat people tend to be sensitive to beauty and to other people's feelings, and they often have a creative streak that needs an outlet. They prefer cooperation to competition and do best in a calm, supportive setting. Their quiet resilience is easy to miss until a hard time shows it.
Strengths
Creativity, compassion, patience, a gentle manner and an inner resilience that outlasts setbacks.
Challenges
Worry, indecision, a need for reassurance and avoiding hard conversations.
Goat years and dates
A Goat year starts at Lunar New Year, not on January 1. Goat years since 1950: Wood Goat, January 24, 1955 to February 11, 1956; Fire Goat, February 9, 1967 to January 29, 1968; Earth Goat, January 28, 1979 to February 15, 1980; Metal Goat, February 15, 1991 to February 3, 1992; Water Goat, February 1, 2003 to January 21, 2004; Wood Goat, February 19, 2015 to February 7, 2016. The next Goat year, a Fire Goat, starts on February 6, 2027. If you were born in January or February, check the start date: a birthday before it belongs to the year before.
Element
Every Goat year also carries one of five elements, which cycle so the same element and animal meet only once every 60 years. A Goat born in 1991 is a Metal Goat. The Goat also has a fixed element of its own, Earth, and is a yin sign.
Best and hardest matches
Traditional Chinese astrology puts the twelve animals in four groups of three, and in six opposite pairs. The Goat gets on most easily with the Rabbit and the Pig, the other two in its group. Its opposite is the Ox, six years apart, which is said to bring the most friction.
How Cosmic Array reads it
Cosmic Array reads your animal next to your Western Sun sign. Together they give your Primal Zodiac, one of 144 combinations: a Pisces Sun born in a Goat year, for example, is a Hermit Crab. The Architect blueprint shows your animal, its element and your Primal Zodiac, worked out from the exact Lunar New Year date, and reads them against the rest of your chart.