The Thellid Zodiac
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anteaglecowslothmonkeyratdogbearschool fishspidersheepcatraccoonoctopusgorilla

The animals of the Thellid Zodiac

Let's Assemble The Zodiac

As detailed in the precursor to this page, we now have all the pieces required to build our Thellid Zodiac:

So without further ado, let's get to it!

Selecting The Animal Factors

The animal is the most important group of factors in this system as it has the MOST factors, it embodies the MONTHS, (which people find the most interesting) and it is the visible MANIFESTATION of a given personality type. (Yes there are additional factors but they are not TANGIBLE).

Since it is the most important group it should embody the strongest, most common and most orthogonal factors. Also, it should only embody factors that might realistically be ascribed to a real animal.

Firstly the expectation factor is out as animals are not really optimistic or pessimistic.

This means we need to select 2 factors from one of the remaining subdomains. Since the "How we tackle problems" and the "How we act socially" subdomains both contain 4 factors we need to choose which of these should supply the two. Because the "How we act socially" subdomain has the not-exactly-orthogonal triplet of dominance, self-reliance and abnegation it makes sense to only select 1 factor from it.

Selecting 1 factor from "How we think" I dismiss "emotional - dispassionate" as animals don't have the emotional complexity of humans. I also dismissed "ordered - chaotic" as animals don't have the kind of ordered thinking that humans exhibit. This leaves "practical - abstract" as the factor from this subdomain. In the context of animal behaviour it may be seen as "staid - inventive". The cleverer animals such as monkeys and dolphins will exhibit the "inventive trait".

Selecting 2 factors from "How we tackle problems" I dismiss "stubborn - flexible" as animals are generally stubborn. I also dismiss "confident - nervous" as these are strongly human characteristics which only exist in the higher mammals in the animal world. These leaves "bold - cautious" and "driven - relaxed" as the choices here.

Selecting 1 factor from "How we act socially" I dismissed "dominant - submissive" as each animal species has its dominant and submissive members and we are interested in species characteristics rather than those of a minority of the species members. It was a toss up in the end between "extrovert - introvert" and "selfless - selfish" but I felt that "extrovert - introvert" was more charismatic and so I chose that for this subdomain's factor. Someone else might choose differently but I am happy with the way the animals turned out.

The factors (or personality traits) selected to describe the personality of the animals are thus:

Assigning The Animals

If possible the animals chosen to embody each personality type should be animals that everyone can either see regularly in the flesh or at least on TV. Dogs and cats are common over most of the Earth and although most people don't see sloths, octopuses and eagles very often, they are regularly shown on TV and the internet, so their look and behaviour is fairly universally known.

Animals should also not be chosen from endangered species if possible as we don't want critically important visual exemplars of human characteristics to cease to be.

Because humans are more complex and subtle than animals and have some characteristics that animals do not it is necessary to apply some guides in order to assign characteristics to them:

Here are the exemplars:

1st Factor 2nd Factor 3rd Factor 4th Factor Animals
bold practical driven extravert ant, rooster, bee, sparrow, locust
bold practical driven introvert eagle, honey badger, fly, dragonfly, centipede, shark
bold practical relaxed extravert cow, seal, lion, hippopotamus, bat, kangaroo, emu, whale, water fowl, gull
bold practical relaxed introvert sloth, rhinoceros, panda, giant anteater
bold abstract driven extravert monkey, chimpanzee
bold abstract driven introvert rat, fox
bold abstract relaxed extravert dog, dolphin, horse, sow, elephant, crow, parrot, penguin, ferret
bold abstract relaxed introvert bear, boar, otter
cautious practical driven extravert school fish, pigeon, squirrel, guinea pig, butterfly, moth, cockroach
cautious practical driven introvert spider, crocodile, mole, mouse, mink, aardvark, pangolin, armadillo
cautious practical relaxed extravert sheep, deer, rabbit, frog, crab
cautious practical relaxed introvert cat, tiger, lynx, beetle, heron, tortoise, sloth, snake, possum, wallaby, lizard, wombat, owl, snail, solitary fish
cautious abstract driven extravert beaver
cautious abstract driven introvert raccoon
cautious abstract relaxed extravert gorilla
cautious abstract relaxed introvert octopus, orangutan


Cautious and abstract is rarest combination in the animal world and also in the human one. I had to cut the 16 categories down to 15 so I removed the one with least human examples. It was sad not to use the beaver but cautious, abstract, extraverts are rare, especially driven ones. Note that the 14th and 15th months are vestigial containing only one day at best. The gorilla is the rarest of the remaining 15 animals so it gets the Leap Day month. It is hard to choose between the octopus and the raccoon for the remaining full month. Which is rarer: cautious, abstract, driven, introvert or cautious, abstract, relaxed, introvert? The genius in the dark or the lazy educated hermit? Moriarty or Mycroft? I think Mycroft is the rarer so the octopus gets the Old Year's Day month. The raccoon wins, gaining a full month of 28 days.

The beaver personality type: (cautious, abstract, driven, extravert) is thus not available in the Thellid Horoscope. This a pity but I had to cut somewhere. Similarly, although the tuples: (cautious, abstract, relaxed, extravert) & (cautious, abstract, relaxed, introvert) ARE represented they are only there in a vestigial capacity. The octopus gets just one day per year and the gorilla gets only one day every 4 years! Fortunately in the human world as it is in the animal world, cautious and abstract is rare.

Since the octopus and gorilla only get 1 day per month we will need to specify which week and which day that is. This will involve the removal of further personality types but again, this can't be avoided. I will deal with this when I assign the weeks and days.

The full list of Thellid animals is now: ant, eagle, cow, sloth, monkey, rat, dog, bear, school fish, spider, sheep, cat, raccoon, gorilla & octopus.

What Is Set 2?

Assigning set 2 involves selecting 3 of the remaining personality traits and discarding 1 of the 8 resultant combinations. The question is: What will this set represent?

All sets bar the animals should represent something that a person does that allows them to express their personality. This could be their profession, their favourite recreation, their favourite food or drink, their choice of clothing, the way they invest their money, the way they manage their love life, the way they manage an organisation etc.

I tried using professions but I found that they were not truly representative of the character of the person. For example: dipoles like abnegation and dominance are squashed as most professions require obedience. Similarly, organisation is only one way only as business must be organised lest they fail.

Recreational activities is a better choice for the 2nd set as there is nothing forcing the person in any particular direction.

Selecting The Recreations

Having used the personality dipoles of daring, abstraction, motivation and extroversion for our animals we next need to choose another 3 to assign recreations. The choices are:

The best way to proceed in our selection is to select the dipole from each subdomain that is the most strongly related to recreations. I was able to come up with recreational activities that suited each pole so I could not say that any of them were completely irrelevant, however I did feel that certain dipoles were more strongly relevant than others.

Our list of recreational traits is thus: organisation, toughness and self-reliance.

Assigning The Recreations

Here are our 3 recreation dipoles:

It is handy to apply some guidelines in interpreting the given traits when applying them to the many recreational activities:

Placing all 8 combinations of these traits and assigning professions to them gives us the following table:

1st Factor 2nd Factor 3rd Factor Exemplars Recreations
ordered tough self-reliant Boxer, Puzzler, Dress-Maker individual sports: (tennis, boxing, cycling, athletics, gymnastics, archery, car racing), hiking, puzzles: (crosswords, sudoku), home improvement, simple computer games: (Candy Crush, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Taipei, Super Mario), simple board games (backgammon, monopoly, yahtzee), crafts: (knitting, woodworking, metalworking, sewing, pottery), individual card games: (poker, snap, go fish, solitaire)
ordered tough dependent Footballer, Cricketer, Genealogist team sports: (football, cricket, baseball, volleyball), MMORPGs (WOW, COD), genealogy, HAM radio
ordered sensitive self-reliant Bookworm, Collector, Gardener reading, strolling, watching movies, collecting, cooking, gardening, astronomy, model making
ordered sensitive dependent Musician, Actor, Fan playing written music with others: (choir, orchestra, band), acting, package travel, attending concerts, watching entertainment
chaotic tough self-reliant Traveller, Chess-Master, Hunter complex board games: (chess), complex computer games: (Hearthstone, Warcraft, Fortnite), free travel, adventuring, fishing, hunting
chaotic tough dependent Role Player Traditional multiplayer RPGs: (D&D, Rolemaster)
chaotic sensitive self-reliant Artist, Poet, Composer solo creative arts: painting, creative writing, music composing, creative photography
chaotic sensitive dependent Jazz God, Dancer, Bridge Pro cooperative improvisation: (jazz, charades, 2 man stand-up comedy, free dancing), team complex card games: (bridge, 500, canasta)


We only need 7 of these so sadly we need to discard one. The two rarest are team improvisation and RPGs. It's a tough call as very few people do jazz improvisation and likewise few play bridge while true RPGs such as D&D are fading away. As a veteran DM it is sad to discard D&D but since it is the rarest it must go. The tuple chaotic-tough-dependent is discarded.

The prime exemplars of the remaining tuples are: boxer, footballer, bookworm, musician, traveller, artist and jazz god.

Now to deal with the two animals that belong to months with only one day:

In the case of the octopus, (cautious, abstract, relaxed, introvert), it can only have one recreation. Since it is an introvert it will most likely be self-reliant, since it is cautious it will likely be sensitive and since it is abstract it will likely be chaotic. It's recreation is thus: Artist.

In the case of the gorilla, (cautious, abstract, relaxed, extravert), it can only have one recreation. Since it is an extravert it will most likely be dependent, the rest will be like the octopus. It's recreation is thus: Jazz God.

Selecting The 3rd Set

Having used 7 of The Sparkling 12 traits there are just 5 left. They are:

The best way to proceed in our selection is to pick 2 traits that work together well in some area of ordinary human operations.

We have expectation now as a given and only need to choose between rationality and dominance for its partner.

Consider expectation and rationality. What would an emotional optimist be for example? A second time husband? An emotional pessimist would then be a philanderer, a dispassionate optimist a marriage of convenience and a dispassionate pessimist a bachelor or spinster. These are all viable although it would not be nice to accuse a happily married person of being a philanderer or a spinster.

Consider expectation and dominance. What would an dominant optimist be for example? A market player? A dominant pessimist would then be a bond holder, a submissive optimist a managed fund member and a submissive pessimist a term depositor. All of these are viable as well.

It all comes down to the choice between how a person handles money and how he handles marriage. Quite frankly both would work well in this place although the marriage option is probably too loaded. There is one another consideration though: If we want to use the remaining 3 traits later on for a multi-year cycle we will want to avoid non-orthogonality in that set so it would be better to use dominance as that would leave just one trait in each of the remaining subdomains, ensuring orthogonality for the final set.

We have thus chosen the theme for our 2 factor set which is investment philosophy.
Our list of investor traits is: expectation and dominance.

Assigning The Investor Factors

Using both dipoles we have:

1st Factor 2nd Factor Investor Type
optimistic dominant Market Player
optimistic submissive Managed Fund Member
pessimistic dominant Bond Holder
pessimistic submissive Term Depositor


Since the number of combinations of these dipoles equals the number of weeks in a month there was no need to discard any. Wow! Relief!

Our prime exemplars for this set are now: Market Player, Managed Fund Member, Bond Holder & Term Depositor.

Again we need to deal with the two animals that belong to months with only one day:

In the case of the octopus, (cautious, abstract, relaxed, introvert), it can only have one investor type. Since it is an introvert and relaxed it will most likely be submissive, since it is cautious it will surely be pessimistic. It's investor type is thus: Term Depositor.

In the case of the gorilla, (cautious, abstract, relaxed, extravert), it can also only have one investor type. Although it is an extravert it is still relaxed and cautious and will most likely be submissive, the rest will be like the octopus. It's investor type is thus: Term Depositor, (same as the octopus).

The Final Set

Since we have used 9 traits of the 12 available the traits for the final set are already chosen for us. They are:

So what aspect of life to use for this set of traits? One's fashion sense? Hardly! What is a selfish dress for example? Management style is much better.

Again it helps to have some guidelines in applying these traits to management styles:

1st Factor 2nd Factor 3rd Factor Management Style
emotional persistent selfless The Father (Paternalistic)
emotional persistent selfish The King (Authoritative)
emotional flexible selfless The Coach (Coaching)
emotional flexible selfish The Friend (Participative)
dispassionate persistent selfless The Visionary (Visionary)
dispassionate persistent selfish The Bureaucrat (Delegative)
dispassionate flexible selfless The Consultant (Consultative)
dispassionate flexible selfish The Politician (Collaborative)


And that wraps up assigning of personality traits to time periods. These traits will be used in an 8 year cycle beginning on the year 0T. Each year will be stated as: "The Year Of The Visionary", "The Year Of The Coach" etc. Because 1,000 is divisible by 8, each millennium will start with The Year Of The Father. The year 12016T, (2016 CE), was the last Year Of The Father and thus the current year at the time of writing, (2021 CE), is "The Year Of The Bureaucrat".

Because the gorilla, (cautious, abstract, relaxed, extravert), represents the leap month: Nabbakan, it can only take 2 of the management styles, since it only occurs every 4 years on average. Since it is extravert it is more likely to be selfless, since it is cautious and relaxed it is more likely to be flexible. The two possibles styles are then The Coach and The Consultant. When the leap year in question is even it will be The Coach, when it is odd it will be The Consultant.

Survey Of Traits

We have successfully used ALL of the dipoles of The Sparkling 12! Woot!. This means that we can represent nearly EVERY personality type that might possibly exist!

There is a qualifier though: Because I had to discard nearly 3 of the 16 primary tuples in order to fit the 13 months and 1¼ days, 3/16 of the total are not available after all. However I have arranged it so that these are the rarest of the choices. Similarly for the 1/8 that I discarded to fit 8 tuples into a 7 day week. Overall you may argue that I have left out almost a quarter of the possible personalities but remember that these are the rarest quarter... Nevertheless there will be people who are disenfranchised. Mi dispiace... Before you object to this treatment however, consider the ENORMOUS improvement over existing horoscopes where 99.9% of the possible personalities are discarded!!!

It is impossible to shoehorn EVERYTHING into a horoscope but I feel I have done pretty well considering the constraints. This gives a VERY broad selection of personalities! If anything it feels like there are too many! Ah well, better too many than too few!

Putting Them Together

So selecting a random element from each of the 4 sections might give: "visionary, bond-holder, footballer ant". This decodes as: pessimistic, dominant, ordered, tough, dependant, bold, practical, driven, extravert, dispassionate, persistent & selfless. Quite a list of personality traits!

Another selection might give: "coach, market-player, jazz-god, monkey". This decodes as: dominant, optimistic, chaotic, sensitive, dependent, bold, abstract, driven, extravert, emotional, flexible & selfless.

Since all the traits are dipoles it is easy to calculate compatibility with another personality, (assuming that traits in common creates compatibility…).

Assigning them to the months, weeks & days

It is simplest to assign each trait in binary counting order although this does create some artifacts, for example since the first monthly trait is "daring" if we use "bold" as 0 then everyone born in the first 7 months will be "bold". Is this too long a period for one trait?

To avoid this we can mandate that each level's counting order is randomized but this just leads to confusion so I think it best to accept that we will have bold for 7 consecutive months.

This gives:

Month
Number		 Month
Name		 Animal
1 Alvakku The Ant
2 Bethanis The Eagle
3 Duvadda The Cow
4 Emovvi The Sloth
5 Forkithal The Monkey
6 Kalvazzi The Rat
7 Irentos The Dog
8 Jukennuk The Bear
9 Miskullen The Fish
10 Ossakov The Spider
11 Raikkaved The Sheep
12 Underro The Cat
13 Zithebbe The Raccoon
14 Nabbakan The Gorilla
15 Werrimul The Octopus


The weeks are simply assigned in order:

Week
Number		 Week
Name		 Investor Type
1 Nganda Market Player
2 Yervein Managed Fund Member
3 Shommak Bond Holder
4 Thimmel Term Depositor


The days are simply assigned in order:

Day
Number		 Day
Name		 Pastime
1 Pasku Boxer
2 Lokkan Footballer
3 Gunji Bookworm
4 Hithed Musician
5 Shevro Traveller
6 Teijal Artist
7 Vaira Jazz God


Finally, the years are simply assigned in order, with the first coinciding with a year number that is a multiple of 8:

Year
Number		 Year
Name		 Management Style
1 The Father Paternalistic
2 The King Authoritative
3 The Coach Coaching
4 The Friend Participative
5 The Visionary Visionary
6 The Bureaucrat Delegative
7 The Consultant Consultative
8 The Politician Collaborative


Voila! The Thellid Zodiac!

The theory is done so next is the consumer package.