WEBVTT - Minisode 2: Sam 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:05.519 Warning. The following episode includes talk of magical texts, boxing 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:09.280 the mafia, and how a child preacher who railed against 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:28.720 astrology found his path in the stars. Sensitive listeners take care. 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:34.720 At the very beginning of this show, we set out 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:38.919 to find people with unusual stories biographies that upended our 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.000 understanding of astrology. And so my colleagues Mary and Mitra, 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.479 they went looking for all sorts of folks, right like 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:51.400 finance bros who believed in astrology, cheesemongers used the stars 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.800 to guide their process, towns that have built their entire 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.960 identity around astrology. And then one day Mary said to me, 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.240 I think that is a community of ex evangelicals who 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:05.440 fled the church and now they put their entire faith 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:10.520 in the stars. And you know, I was immediately fascinated, 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.360 right like, how do you walk away from one set 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:17.240 of really strong beliefs and then dive headfirst into another. 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.160 What type of person decides to do that? And what 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:23.480 are the circumstances that help you find your faith again? 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:26.920 And that's how we found Sam Reynolds. 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:29.920 I went to an astrologer to set up a gemini. 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.640 Sam is an extraordinary person and the truth is he's 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.240 got a story I can't stop thinking about. At birth, 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.080 his parents were told he wouldn't walk as a child. 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:42.720 He wasn't supposed to become a preacher in college. He 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:45.679 wasn't supposed to question his faith or take comfort in astrology. 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:50.120 But Sam's kind of defied expectations at every point of 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:53.400 his life. And what makes them so fascinating to me 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.760 at least is that in this search for faith and 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:01.080 love and a truer understanding of humanity, he moves with 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:05.320 such grace and assuredness and the past. For him it 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.680 never seems to be a mistake, like just a stepping 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:13.480 stone to where you were always meant to be. From 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:19.360 Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast, I'm Mongaish articular. Welcome to Skyland Drive, 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.000 minnesot too. Sam. 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.480 My name is Sam Reynolds. I'm from Buffalo, New York. 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.520 I currently live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:07.280 been a practicing astrologer for twenty years, and I got 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:11.040 into astrology trying to disprove it. I was born with 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:15.600 multiple birth defects and being able to function, to walk, 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.160 to do the things that the doctors predicted I wouldn't 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:20.280 be able to do. They said that I would be 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:25.680 developmentally delayed. I wasn't, and so I became assigned as 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:27.640 a miracle baby by my family. 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.000 Sam was raised as a Southern Baptist, so he grew 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.320 up knowing that on Judgment Day he would have to 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:35.720 stand before God and account for his life. 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:41.120 I did feel a calling, literally, hearing a voice in 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:43.640 my head, you know, a calling into the ministry saying 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:47.400 I want you to preach. So I went to my 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.640 mother's friends church and the pastor took me under his wing. 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:56.720 My father didn't fully believe me because I actually was 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.800 a boxer at the time, and so I was boxing 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.760 and he kept arranging fights for me, and I was like, no, 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:06.760 I don't think it's right to kind of beat people 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.360 up on Saturday and then go preach about love on Sunday. 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.720 And he didn't believe me. So my mother suggested we 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:15.600 write him a letter of resignation, and I wrote him 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.560 a letter telling him that I was going into the ministry, 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:19.839 and he was like, oh, I guess. 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:20.320 This is real. 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:26.400 I preached my first sermon on my mother's birthday, September 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:30.240 twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. Maybe there were about seventy people there, 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.400 my parents were there and I saw something I had 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:39.120 never seen. After I preached, my father stood up and 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:43.000 testified and he started to cry. My father didn't cry. 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:48.440 I knew my father had a complicated life. When I 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:53.799 say a complicated life, my father was into the numbers racket. 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:58.719 Before we had state lotteries, there was an underground mostly 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.400 seen as criminal news, work of people who would get 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.880 people to play the numbers for money. I mean it's 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.760 tied to the mob, to the mafia, and so my father, 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:15.919 my father killed people. So for him to cry, I 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:18.320 mean that was you know when you talk about Tony Soprano, 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:21.560 you see it on TV. He literally lived that life. 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:25.600 And I think that was probably just the first time 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.720 out of maybe two times ever saw my father cry 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:30.360 in his life. 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:32.800 Sam was only twelve when he became a preacher, and 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.840 he fully absorbed this evangelical lesson that astrology is a sin. 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.400 He even preached a sermon warning against its evils. Besides, 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.680 the one time he did look up his horoscope, he 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.160 couldn't tell which sign he really was because his birthday 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.400 fell on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius, and as 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.000 far as he was concerned, it was a sin that 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:54.240 didn't even make sense. 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:56.600 By the time I went into the ministry, I was 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:00.320 already convinced that astrology was hogwashed. You know, people asked 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:12.520 me what signer? You know, I'm the sign of the Cross. 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.640 My first year of college, I thought it would be 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.400 cool to take religion classes. Technically that was a mistake 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:29.239 because it made me start questioning my religion. I started 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:32.599 to have a crisis of faith. I started talking to 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:34.480 different ministers because I was like, well, how can I 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:40.600 really preach sincerely when I'm confused. Some of the ministers 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:44.640 I talked to they were like, it comes with the job, kid. 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:47.520 My idea was to take a step away from the 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.400 ministry until I would recoup my faith, But my faith 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.000 never came back. By the time I was twenty two, 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:54.600 I had become an atheist. 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:58.480 Newly liberated from his old beliefs. Sam headed to Temple University, 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.480 where he enrolled in the Africa American Studies graduate program. 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.280 While he was there, he fell for one of his classmates. 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:07.960 There was just one problem, and. 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:10.320 She was really into astrology, and I was like, uh, 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:12.640 you know, well, if I had to choose between being 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:15.560 an Iraq nid a scorpio and a centaur. Clearly, I'm 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:16.120 a centaur. 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:19.960 How could sem possibly impress this woman a Gemini who 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:22.200 teased him about not knowing his own sign. 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:24.320 She's like, no, I think you're the bug. 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:26.000 Finally he remembered something. 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.640 There was a book when I was younger that my 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:33.960 great grandmother had. It's called the six seven eight Books 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.080 of Moses. It's supposedly a magical text. 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:39.640 He figured his crush would be blown away by a 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:42.600 copy of this strange book, so he starts making calls 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.640 and finally tracks it down at a North Philly bookstore. 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:47.760 But when he goes to pick it up. 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:50.320 This guy starts talking to me about astrology and he's 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:52.360 an astrologer. At first I was like, and let me 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:54.480 just get the book, man, but then he's like, oh, 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:56.880 you ever had your chart done? It was like hmm, okay, 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.480 I agreed to get the reading. For the first fifteen minutes, 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.120 I was convinced this is BS and he's like, oh, 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:05.680 it looks like your mom had some problems while carrying you. 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:08.120 In my head, I said, no shit, sir, a lock. 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:11.600 I mean I'm four to nine. Chances are I didn't 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.400 have the normal birth. And then he said, oh, well, 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:16.720 it looks like you're a pretty smart fellow. But again, 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:18.480 I was thinking, I told you I was in a 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:22.200 PhD program, and then it happened. He said, it looks 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.320 like the complications I talked about with your mom may 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.320 have been from some involvement with your mother, your brother, 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:33.600 and your father. What do you mean And he's like, yeah, 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:36.719 some issues with your father and your brother happened, and 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:42.280 then it adversely affected your mother. What I had learned 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:47.760 two months before is that my brother, when he was 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.360 eight years old, my mother was making kissing faces at 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:55.360 him and playing with him. And he said, oh, you're 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:57.800 doing me like Daddy was with that white woman last night. 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.600 And she's like, what are you talking about? And she's like, 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:04.720 Daddy was in the front seat with this white woman 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.080 making kissing noises and doing all this stuff and huffing 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:08.440 and puffed, and he thought I was sleep but I 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:10.760 was just in the back of the seat listening and 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:18.280 looking at them. And she was devastated. She caught the 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:23.400 flu early in her pregnancy with me. I guess compromised 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:27.920 immune system from emotional distress. So what that astrologer was 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.480 describing was pretty much exactly as it happened, and I 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.160 don't know how he did that. You know, it was 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:41.640 blown away. And so for me, astrology became this other 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:46.680 way of understanding oneself that was independent of the political sphere. 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:48.840 Even I was like, well, maybe it's an interesting way 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:49.800 of asking questions. 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:05.160 These days, Sam still uses astrology to ask questions, but 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:08.960 he's found a lot of answers too. He's a mentor 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:12.120 to young astrologers just starting out and a co founder 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:16.000 of the International Society of Black Astrologers. He's developed a 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:21.559 perspective that's totally him, thoughtful, intellectual, and most of all, 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:23.600 driven by a desire to connect. 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:31.080 Astrology is the net cultural experience of thousands of years 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:35.000 of looking at the heavens and their correlations in terms 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.680 of finding significance in our life. Now you could say, well, 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:45.920 you're just manufacturing it sure like everything else in your life. 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.520 I'm curious about people. I always have been. I wanted 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.360 to understand how people think, why they make the choices 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:57.160 that they do. Astrology gives me a way to have 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:03.160 discussions with people about themselves. It becomes a conversation about 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:08.720 how the astrology illuminates their lives, rather than I would 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:13.600 say dictates their lives. The word consider comes from Latin 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:18.000 for con which means with and sadira stars, but means 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:21.320 to think with your stars. So I see astrology as 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:23.920 a way to have a conversation, which is more way 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:26.840 of reflecting on yourself and your desires and your character. 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.400 The young Sam would be horrified by me being an astrologer, 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:41.840 But what I think would soften him is recognizing some 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:47.400 measure of his dream for his life, which was to 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:53.480 be communicating and messaging people around the world, being able 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:56.000 to do what I do and support myself. I think 0:11:56.840 --> 0:11:58.920 that was make him proud. But he'd probably like, well, 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:05.680 why can't you do that for Jesus? So I'd probably 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:07.520 be like, yeah, that's a longer conversation. 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.520 Often there's a finality to the way people read astrology, 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:33.120 that what's destined to happen will happen. But Sam, as 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:35.760 he puts a he doesn't use an astrological chart to 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:40.319 read your life as a finished biography, but instead as 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:44.080 a work in process. I love how there's an openness 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.920 to Sam, the way he believes so deeply, but how 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.360 he'll always listen with an open mind, how he doesn't 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.360 hesitate to take in your questions and your qualms and 0:12:55.480 --> 0:13:00.000 to truly consider them because he isn't afraid to change 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:14.120 in his mind as long as he's thinking with the stars. 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.640 That's it for this week's episode of Skyline Drive. Special 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:22.520 thanks to my team here, Mary Mitro, Mark, Anna and 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.720 Threw for working so hard over the holidays to pull 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:30.240 the show together, and Botany as always for the incredible soundtrack. 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.000 Also thank you to the wonderful Sam Reynolds for making 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:35.920 time for us to visit Sam on the web or 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:37.760 book of reading with him. Be sure to go to 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:42.280 unlock Astrology dot com. That's unlock astrology dot com. 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:44.920 Also a quick shout out to my pal Laura Mayer, 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.760 who did this episode's warning. Laura not only helped us 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:48.200 set up. 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:50.960 Things when we started Kaleidoscope, but also. 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.679 Dropped one of the biggest shows of the year, Shameless 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.559 Acquisition Target. It is so funny and if you want 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:58.960 to know everything about the podcast industry from one of 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.760 its consummate inside, it is essential listening. 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.600 We'll be back with full length episodes next week, starting 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:08.679 with a writer who just wants to know. 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:11.160 I had a question about like, who's going to die first? 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.200 My mom and our dad because there's an answer that 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:16.640 I want. 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:20.160 It's so dark. 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:24.200 I mean, it is dark, but it's also way more 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.120 fun than it sounds. That's it for this week's Minisot. 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:29.080 Thank you so much for listening.