Year of the Sheep

Personality

The Sheep arrived eighth, having crossed the river together with the Monkey and Rooster, all three working in cooperation to navigate. The Sheep was the one who found the raft. This detail is revealing: Sheep people have a quiet ingenuity that often goes unnoticed because they don't announce it.

Sheep people have the deepest reserves of empathy in the system. You feel things at a level that others can only approximate, and your sensitivity makes you a natural artist, healer, and listener. You are drawn to beauty in all its forms, and you have a gift for creating it. Where rougher souls see problems, you often see something that simply needs a more careful approach.

Challenges

The Sheep's sensitivity can tip into fragility. You can absorb the moods of the people around you to a degree that leaves you exhausted and depleted. A tendency to avoid confrontation can mean that your own needs go unspoken — and unmet. The Sheep who learns to speak up, to set limits, and to direct their considerable energy inward as well as outward, becomes formidable.

In Life & Career

Sheep people are drawn to art, music, design, therapy, social work, teaching, photography, and writing. They are at their best in roles that allow for depth of feeling and creative expression, and at their worst in high-pressure transactional environments.

Compatibility

Famous Sheep People

In Japanese

In Japanese, the Sheep is known as the character 未 (pronounced hitsuji in the context of the zodiac). This is the traditional kanji used in the 干支 (eto) calendar system, which assigns an animal and element to each year in a sixty-year cycle.