My sister-in-law and I visited the site of the Battle of New Orleans at the old Chalmette plantation, five miles outside of New Orleans. As a logical Virgo with an inquisitive Gemini moon, I found myself wondering why Andrew Jackson, the ranking general, later to become president, won the battle and why the British General Edward Pakenham lost. There are always many analyses for why one loses a battle, but character is destiny, so I decided to look up General Pakenham’s chart to see if I could find some clues as to what spiritual traits caused his demise that fateful day.

Edward Packenham's birth chart, time unknown, natural houses. Astrograph Software.

Interestingly, both General Pakenham and General Jackson were both Pisces Decan 3, the third Decan of Pisces being ruled by Mars. Jackson employed secret tactics, such as blowing up a British stronghold in the dead of night, much to the consternation of Pakenham’s European sensibilities. Yet Pakenham also issued his own "Secret Orders." This seemed to be a clue as to who would win. Who would win the race to the bottom of the Piscean self-undoing? Who could manage secrets and mishaps? Who could win a dance of Mars and Neptune as ruling planets?

General Pakenham felt that this war should not have been adjudicated in the first place, Piscean intuition, but it seems that fate, and his lot of fortune and Neptune in Virgo, was working against his higher mine and strategy, regardless. General Packenham would be the masthead, with Mars in Aries trining Jupiter in Leo, the king as the ram, expanding beyond his earlier successes in the Napoleonic Wars. Many communication mishaps occurred during Pakenham’s Battle of New Orleans, high tech artillery that failed, orders misunderstood, as his weaker waning moon in Sagittarius opposes an eccentric Uranus in Gemini, requiring perhaps the nurturance of Ceres in Gemini to give better commands and lend itself to more creative, thoughtful strategy. Devilish and magical Mercury in Pisces doesn’t help either, squaring off against Uranus in Gemini.

General Pakenham was last seen galloping towards Jackson’s line, switching horses in vain, Mars in Aries conjunct Chiron in Pisces, painfully never able to escape the dissolving waters of his planets in Pisces, especially Venus, an unrequited love left unabated due to his long military career that finally ended on the fields of Chalmette.

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