The Goat

Goat people develop their own value system in their teens or twenties and most of them stick to it, for the rest of their lives. If they do dramatically change their attitude towards money and the material world, it has profound consequences and will alter every other aspect of their existence too. In most cases, though, goats decide early on if they are capitalists, socialists, collectors, hippies, tax-exiles or communists. This then becomes the light by which they steer their journeys.

To understand the goat, read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, who was born under this Chinese sign. It is not just a love story. It is a love and money story. The heroine, Miss Elizabeth Bennett, puts her values before a lucrative marriage to Mr Darcy, a man who offends her principles despite having the solutions to her family’s financial problems. It is a story about what happens when you refuse to sell out and it’s a classic goat tome.

Goat Andy Warhol challenged the art world’s ideas about value, by creating prints of Campbell’s soup cans. Was it art? Should it be worth millions, or just worth the paper it was printed on? Warhol was a typical goat in that he held a passionate belief about what was (or was not) precious and he made it work. He also kept all his receipts, as you will know if you have read his diaries.

Goats are one of the few animals to steer African rural economies. I once worked as the patron and trustee of the children’s charity War Child. We knew that one goat could change a family’s life as a source of income. It’s just another way to think about this sign which is intrinsically tied to questions about money.

Not a lot of people know that it was a goat – George Harrison – who wrote the Beatles’ classic, Taxman, about his objection to heavy taxes in 1960s Britain. Harrison’s contemporary Mick Jagger, another goat, wrote a song called Satisfaction about the material world. Later on he became a tax exile.

Another famous Sixties goat, Jim Morrison, had such strong objections to selling out that he found himself at odds with the other members of The Doors when they wanted to license Light My Fire for advertising purposes. Goats can be anti-materialism or total capitalists but they all hold such strong beliefs about money that it can make or break relationships.

It should not surprise you to hear that billionaire Bill Gates is a goat. Or, perhaps, that Coco Chanel, who created wardrobes for billionaires, was a goat too. Coco came from poverty and her values revolved around the creation of costly collectables – to keep (and keep their value) forever. Eventually, this became known as investment dressing.

How do goats decide what is precious and valuable to them? Some find it by developing a relationship with nature and becoming environmental activists who reject the values of big business, which seeks to destroy the wilderness in order to accumulate profit. Then there are the goats who are at the top of Wall Street and any New York skyscraper you wish to name, who have no issues at all with selling their souls for the right price. In astrology, this sign vibrates to Taurus. If you are in any kind of financial relationship with another goat, or a cat (also very concerned with values) then it is essential that you both share the same ideas about what is earned, owned or owed.