As the Republican Party is serving up two Pisces sun presidential candidates (Romney and Perry), I wanted to take a look at past Piscean presidents. Of our 43 presidents, there have been four with sun in Pisces:

• George Washington (1789-1797)
• James Madison (1809-1817)
• Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
• Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897)

The 18th and 19th centuries were better environments for Piscean US presidents. The 20^th century produced none. Maybe the 21^st century will see a return of this mutable water sign in the White House.

Pisces

Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac and is a mutable water sign. Mutable means changeable and adaptable. Water means sensitive and emotional. Pisces is the “psychic” of the zodiac, picking up emotional and mental impressions as a sponge soaks water.

Because Pisces is so sensitive and impressionable, it can be easily manipulated. And because Pisces sees through people, it can also manipulate.

Pisces has also been called the “garbage can” of the zodiac in that it contains a little piece of each sign. It’s a collector of psychic leftovers from the other eleven signs.

Pisces is sympathetic and empathetic and makes a good counselor or religious practitioner. Pisces can be sympathetic and understanding to the point of suffering abuse. Think of the spouse who lives with an abusive partner and believes, each time, it is the last abuse because it sees the goodness in the person.

“Believe” is the keyword of Pisces.

Imaging the past in the future

In looking at the charts of these Pisces presidents and the configurations they were born and governed in, one stands out as governing in a time similar to our own – Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson hardly seems the sensitive Pisces as he was known as “Old Hickory” a dueling individualist. Or maybe he was so sensitive that he had to murder those that disagreed with (dissed) him. Jackson lived in a pre-Tweet universe, so I don’t have the scoop on his motivations.

Jackson had sun in Pisces and moon in Virgo, as does Republican candidate Rick Perry. The outer planets in Jackson’s natal horoscope and presidential term are much like the transits today:

During Jackson’s presidency and today there are outer planets in Aries and Capricorn. We are dealing again today with the issues of society structure and government oversight versus self-determination. The Aquarius/Pisces energy is about the masses, Aquarius in a political, idealistic sense and Pisces in a spiritual sense.

Jackson Presidency

Here are a few Jackson presidency highlights compliments of Wikipedia:

• Opposition to the National Bank
• Indian Removal Policy
• Nullification Crisis (South Carolina wanted to nullify a federal law on tariffs)

Congress renewed the charter for the National Bank and Jackson vetoed it. Jackson’s veto is an interesting read and quite prescient. Here are a couple interesting lines of the veto:

• “It appears that more than a fourth part of the stock is held by foreigners and the residue is held by a few hundred of our own citizens, chiefly of the richest class.”
•  “It is easy to conceive that great evils to our country and its institutions millet flow from such a concentration of power in the hands of a few men irresponsible to the people.”

To assess Jackson’s presidency is in the realm of political science, not astrology. When I read about the issues of Jackson’s presidency I have a lot of political thoughts, but my astrological thought is that underneath the particular issues of Jackson’s day are issues that are coming to the fore again today.

• How much federal control?
• How much debt and foreign control?
• Who are our citizens?

You could say we’ve been struggling with this for 235 years in each presidency in some way, especially federal versus state control.

Symbolism

Astrology for me is about symbolism. The symbolism of Jackson’s time seems to have a relation to the symbolism of our time.

It’ll be interesting to see how we manage our big banks, foreign investment and Indians/immigrants this time around.