GoatThe twelve zodiac animalsChinese Zodiac

The goat holds 未, one to three in the afternoon — the hour after the heat when things begin to ease. In the system the goat stands for reception: it registers more than most people do, including the parts nobody said.

You'll recognise it here: changes in atmosphere affect you physically; you need longer than others to digest a day, and undigested days accumulate; and your standards for beauty and comfort are definite — not fussiness, but genuine susceptibility to environment.

Running well, the goat is whoever builds quality and feeling into the thing: the same object passed through you acquires a layer people can't name and can tell is there. In any work with people at the other end, that's the core competence. Blocked, reception becomes overload — too much of other people's feeling arriving, no way to tell which is yours, handled by withdrawing; or caring so much about how others feel that you're behind them permanently. The goat's practical lesson is asking whose feeling this is. That one question hands most of the tiredness back.