Reading The Animal And Element

In Chinese folk astrology a year is read first through its animal and then adjusted by its element. Also read as sheep or ram depending on region, the goat is considered the mildest of the twelve signs and is associated with gentleness and artistry. Some regional folk traditions hold it a difficult year for marriage timing specifically, though that reading is disputed and not universal. The element modifies that base reading: in the five phase (Wu Xing) system Fire governs the south, the color red, the season of summer and the virtue of propriety. A Fire year is traditionally read as active and transformative, quick to expand and quick to burn out; Fire is held to feed Earth and to be held in check by Water.

Put together, 1967 reads in the folk tradition as a Goat year with a Fire cast, Fire's heat tempering the animal's own temperament rather than replacing it. The same twelve animal cycle, adapted with local variation, also orders the traditional calendars of Vietnam, where the rabbit is usually read as a cat, and of Japan, where the pig is usually read as a boar; the underlying stem and element layer that gives 1967 its Fire cast specifically is a Chinese addition that these neighboring traditions do not all keep in the same form. Older reckonings also put the same twelve branches to work outside the calendar of years: the same order once named the twelve double hours of the day and the twelve compass points, so Goat marks a direction and a stretch of the clock in those older systems as well as this year.