Speaker 1: Warning. The following episode includes talk of magical texts, boxing
Speaker 1: the mafia, and how a child preacher who railed against
Speaker 1: astrology found his path in the stars. Sensitive listeners take care.
Speaker 2: At the very beginning of this show, we set out
Speaker 2: to find people with unusual stories biographies that upended our
Speaker 2: understanding of astrology. And so my colleagues Mary and Mitra,
Speaker 2: they went looking for all sorts of folks, right like
Speaker 2: finance bros who believed in astrology, cheesemongers used the stars
Speaker 2: to guide their process, towns that have built their entire
Speaker 2: identity around astrology. And then one day Mary said to me,
Speaker 2: I think that is a community of ex evangelicals who
Speaker 2: fled the church and now they put their entire faith
Speaker 2: in the stars. And you know, I was immediately fascinated,
Speaker 2: right like, how do you walk away from one set
Speaker 2: of really strong beliefs and then dive headfirst into another.
Speaker 2: What type of person decides to do that? And what
Speaker 2: are the circumstances that help you find your faith again?
Speaker 2: And that's how we found Sam Reynolds.
Speaker 3: I went to an astrologer to set up a gemini.
Speaker 2: Sam is an extraordinary person and the truth is he's
Speaker 2: got a story I can't stop thinking about. At birth,
Speaker 2: his parents were told he wouldn't walk as a child.
Speaker 2: He wasn't supposed to become a preacher in college. He
Speaker 2: wasn't supposed to question his faith or take comfort in astrology.
Speaker 2: But Sam's kind of defied expectations at every point of
Speaker 2: his life. And what makes them so fascinating to me
Speaker 2: at least is that in this search for faith and
Speaker 2: love and a truer understanding of humanity, he moves with
Speaker 2: such grace and assuredness and the past. For him it
Speaker 2: never seems to be a mistake, like just a stepping
Speaker 2: stone to where you were always meant to be. From
Speaker 2: Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast, I'm Mongaish articular. Welcome to Skyland Drive,
Speaker 2: minnesot too. Sam.
Speaker 3: My name is Sam Reynolds. I'm from Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 3: I currently live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have
Speaker 3: been a practicing astrologer for twenty years, and I got
Speaker 3: into astrology trying to disprove it. I was born with
Speaker 3: multiple birth defects and being able to function, to walk,
Speaker 3: to do the things that the doctors predicted I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be able to do. They said that I would be
Speaker 3: developmentally delayed. I wasn't, and so I became assigned as
Speaker 3: a miracle baby by my family.
Speaker 2: Sam was raised as a Southern Baptist, so he grew
Speaker 2: up knowing that on Judgment Day he would have to
Speaker 2: stand before God and account for his life.
Speaker 3: I did feel a calling, literally, hearing a voice in
Speaker 3: my head, you know, a calling into the ministry saying
Speaker 3: I want you to preach. So I went to my
Speaker 3: mother's friends church and the pastor took me under his wing.
Speaker 3: My father didn't fully believe me because I actually was
Speaker 3: a boxer at the time, and so I was boxing
Speaker 3: and he kept arranging fights for me, and I was like, no,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's right to kind of beat people
Speaker 3: up on Saturday and then go preach about love on Sunday.
Speaker 3: And he didn't believe me. So my mother suggested we
Speaker 3: write him a letter of resignation, and I wrote him
Speaker 3: a letter telling him that I was going into the ministry,
Speaker 3: and he was like, oh, I guess.
Speaker 1: This is real.
Speaker 3: I preached my first sermon on my mother's birthday, September
Speaker 3: twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. Maybe there were about seventy people there,
Speaker 3: my parents were there and I saw something I had
Speaker 3: never seen. After I preached, my father stood up and
Speaker 3: testified and he started to cry. My father didn't cry.
Speaker 3: I knew my father had a complicated life. When I
Speaker 3: say a complicated life, my father was into the numbers racket.
Speaker 3: Before we had state lotteries, there was an underground mostly
Speaker 3: seen as criminal news, work of people who would get
Speaker 3: people to play the numbers for money. I mean it's
Speaker 3: tied to the mob, to the mafia, and so my father,
Speaker 3: my father killed people. So for him to cry, I
Speaker 3: mean that was you know when you talk about Tony Soprano,
Speaker 3: you see it on TV. He literally lived that life.
Speaker 3: And I think that was probably just the first time
Speaker 3: out of maybe two times ever saw my father cry
Speaker 3: in his life.
Speaker 2: Sam was only twelve when he became a preacher, and
Speaker 2: he fully absorbed this evangelical lesson that astrology is a sin.
Speaker 2: He even preached a sermon warning against its evils. Besides,
Speaker 2: the one time he did look up his horoscope, he
Speaker 2: couldn't tell which sign he really was because his birthday
Speaker 2: fell on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius, and as
Speaker 2: far as he was concerned, it was a sin that
Speaker 2: didn't even make sense.
Speaker 3: By the time I went into the ministry, I was
Speaker 3: already convinced that astrology was hogwashed. You know, people asked
Speaker 3: me what signer? You know, I'm the sign of the Cross.
Speaker 3: My first year of college, I thought it would be
Speaker 3: cool to take religion classes. Technically that was a mistake
Speaker 3: because it made me start questioning my religion. I started
Speaker 3: to have a crisis of faith. I started talking to
Speaker 3: different ministers because I was like, well, how can I
Speaker 3: really preach sincerely when I'm confused. Some of the ministers
Speaker 3: I talked to they were like, it comes with the job, kid.
Speaker 3: My idea was to take a step away from the
Speaker 3: ministry until I would recoup my faith, But my faith
Speaker 3: never came back. By the time I was twenty two,
Speaker 3: I had become an atheist.
Speaker 2: Newly liberated from his old beliefs. Sam headed to Temple University,
Speaker 2: where he enrolled in the Africa American Studies graduate program.
Speaker 2: While he was there, he fell for one of his classmates.
Speaker 2: There was just one problem, and.
Speaker 3: She was really into astrology, and I was like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, well, if I had to choose between being
Speaker 3: an Iraq nid a scorpio and a centaur. Clearly, I'm
Speaker 3: a centaur.
Speaker 2: How could sem possibly impress this woman a Gemini who
Speaker 2: teased him about not knowing his own sign.
Speaker 3: She's like, no, I think you're the bug.
Speaker 2: Finally he remembered something.
Speaker 3: There was a book when I was younger that my
Speaker 3: great grandmother had. It's called the six seven eight Books
Speaker 3: of Moses. It's supposedly a magical text.
Speaker 2: He figured his crush would be blown away by a
Speaker 2: copy of this strange book, so he starts making calls
Speaker 2: and finally tracks it down at a North Philly bookstore.
Speaker 2: But when he goes to pick it up.
Speaker 3: This guy starts talking to me about astrology and he's
Speaker 3: an astrologer. At first I was like, and let me
Speaker 3: just get the book, man, but then he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you ever had your chart done? It was like hmm, okay,
Speaker 3: I agreed to get the reading. For the first fifteen minutes,
Speaker 3: I was convinced this is BS and he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: it looks like your mom had some problems while carrying you.
Speaker 3: In my head, I said, no shit, sir, a lock.
Speaker 3: I mean I'm four to nine. Chances are I didn't
Speaker 3: have the normal birth. And then he said, oh, well,
Speaker 3: it looks like you're a pretty smart fellow. But again,
Speaker 3: I was thinking, I told you I was in a
Speaker 3: PhD program, and then it happened. He said, it looks
Speaker 3: like the complications I talked about with your mom may
Speaker 3: have been from some involvement with your mother, your brother,
Speaker 3: and your father. What do you mean And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: some issues with your father and your brother happened, and
Speaker 3: then it adversely affected your mother. What I had learned
Speaker 3: two months before is that my brother, when he was
Speaker 3: eight years old, my mother was making kissing faces at
Speaker 3: him and playing with him. And he said, oh, you're
Speaker 3: doing me like Daddy was with that white woman last night.
Speaker 3: And she's like, what are you talking about? And she's like,
Speaker 3: Daddy was in the front seat with this white woman
Speaker 3: making kissing noises and doing all this stuff and huffing
Speaker 3: and puffed, and he thought I was sleep but I
Speaker 3: was just in the back of the seat listening and
Speaker 3: looking at them. And she was devastated. She caught the
Speaker 3: flu early in her pregnancy with me. I guess compromised
Speaker 3: immune system from emotional distress. So what that astrologer was
Speaker 3: describing was pretty much exactly as it happened, and I
Speaker 3: don't know how he did that. You know, it was
Speaker 3: blown away. And so for me, astrology became this other
Speaker 3: way of understanding oneself that was independent of the political sphere.
Speaker 3: Even I was like, well, maybe it's an interesting way
Speaker 3: of asking questions.
Speaker 2: These days, Sam still uses astrology to ask questions, but
Speaker 2: he's found a lot of answers too. He's a mentor
Speaker 2: to young astrologers just starting out and a co founder
Speaker 2: of the International Society of Black Astrologers. He's developed a
Speaker 2: perspective that's totally him, thoughtful, intellectual, and most of all,
Speaker 2: driven by a desire to connect.
Speaker 3: Astrology is the net cultural experience of thousands of years
Speaker 3: of looking at the heavens and their correlations in terms
Speaker 3: of finding significance in our life. Now you could say, well,
Speaker 3: you're just manufacturing it sure like everything else in your life.
Speaker 3: I'm curious about people. I always have been. I wanted
Speaker 3: to understand how people think, why they make the choices
Speaker 3: that they do. Astrology gives me a way to have
Speaker 3: discussions with people about themselves. It becomes a conversation about
Speaker 3: how the astrology illuminates their lives, rather than I would
Speaker 3: say dictates their lives. The word consider comes from Latin
Speaker 3: for con which means with and sadira stars, but means
Speaker 3: to think with your stars. So I see astrology as
Speaker 3: a way to have a conversation, which is more way
Speaker 3: of reflecting on yourself and your desires and your character.
Speaker 3: The young Sam would be horrified by me being an astrologer,
Speaker 3: But what I think would soften him is recognizing some
Speaker 3: measure of his dream for his life, which was to
Speaker 3: be communicating and messaging people around the world, being able
Speaker 3: to do what I do and support myself. I think
Speaker 3: that was make him proud. But he'd probably like, well,
Speaker 3: why can't you do that for Jesus? So I'd probably
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, that's a longer conversation.
Speaker 2: Often there's a finality to the way people read astrology,
Speaker 2: that what's destined to happen will happen. But Sam, as
Speaker 2: he puts a he doesn't use an astrological chart to
Speaker 2: read your life as a finished biography, but instead as
Speaker 2: a work in process. I love how there's an openness
Speaker 2: to Sam, the way he believes so deeply, but how
Speaker 2: he'll always listen with an open mind, how he doesn't
Speaker 2: hesitate to take in your questions and your qualms and
Speaker 2: to truly consider them because he isn't afraid to change
Speaker 2: in his mind as long as he's thinking with the stars.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week's episode of Skyline Drive. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to my team here, Mary Mitro, Mark, Anna and
Speaker 2: Threw for working so hard over the holidays to pull
Speaker 2: the show together, and Botany as always for the incredible soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Also thank you to the wonderful Sam Reynolds for making
Speaker 2: time for us to visit Sam on the web or
Speaker 2: book of reading with him. Be sure to go to
Speaker 2: unlock Astrology dot com. That's unlock astrology dot com.
Speaker 4: Also a quick shout out to my pal Laura Mayer,
Speaker 4: who did this episode's warning. Laura not only helped us
Speaker 4: set up.
Speaker 2: Things when we started Kaleidoscope, but also.
Speaker 4: Dropped one of the biggest shows of the year, Shameless
Speaker 4: Acquisition Target. It is so funny and if you want
Speaker 4: to know everything about the podcast industry from one of
Speaker 4: its consummate inside, it is essential listening.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with full length episodes next week, starting
Speaker 2: with a writer who just wants to know.
Speaker 3: I had a question about like, who's going to die first?
Speaker 2: My mom and our dad because there's an answer that
Speaker 2: I want.
Speaker 3: It's so dark.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is dark, but it's also way more
Speaker 2: fun than it sounds. That's it for this week's Minisot.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening.