Minisode 2: Sam

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As a child preacher in a Baptist church, Sam grew up believing that astrology was a sin. Then a chance encounter in a bookstore made him see things differently. 

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Episode Transcript

ANNOUNCER (00:00):
Warning. The following episode includes talk of magical texts, boxing
the mafia, and how a child preacher who railed against
astrology found his path in the stars. Sensitive listeners take care.

MANGESH (00:32):
At the very beginning of the show, we set out
to find people with unusual stories biographies that up ended
our understanding of astrology. And so my colleagues Mary and Mitra,
they went looking for all sorts of folks, right like
finance bros who believed in astrology, cheesemongers used the stars
to guide their process, towns that have built their entire

(00:54):
identity around astrology. And then one day Mary said to me,
I think that is a community of ex evangelicals who
fled the church and now they put their entire faith
in the stars. And you know, I was immediately fascinated,
right like, how do you walk away from one set
of really strong beliefs and then dive headfirst into another.

(01:17):
What type of person decides to do that? And what
are the circumstances that help you find your faith again?
And that's how we found Sam Reynolds. I went to
an astrologer, a gemini. Sam is an extraordinary person, and
the truth is, he's got a story I can't stop
thinking about at birth, his parents were told he wouldn't

(01:38):
walk as a child. He wasn't supposed to become a
preacher in college. He wasn't supposed to question his faith
or take comfort in astrology. But Sam is kind of
defied expectations at every point of his life. And what
makes him so fascinating to me at least is that
in this search for faith and love and a truer
understanding of humanity, he moves with such grace and assured

(02:03):
nous and the past. For him it never seems to
be a mistake, like just a stepping stone to where
you were always meant to be. From Kaleidoscope and I
Heart Podcast, I'm Mangesh Hattikudur. Welcome to Skyline Drive

SAM (02:53):
Sam. My name is Sam Reynolds. I'm from Buffalo, New York.
I currently live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have
been a practicing astrologer for twenty years, and I got
into astrology trying to disprove it. I was born with
multiple birth defects and being able to function, to walk,

(03:15):
to do the things that the doctors predicted I wouldn't
be able to do. They said that I would be
developmentally delayed. I wasn't, and so I became assigned as
a miracle baby by my family.

MANGESH (03:28):
Sam was raised as a Southern Baptist, so he grew
up knowing that on Judgment Day he would have to
stand before God and account for his life.

SAM (03:36):
I did feel a calling, literally, hearing a voice in
my head, you know, a calling into the ministry saying
I went you to preach. So I went to my
mother's friends church, and the pastor took me under his wing.
My father didn't fully believe me because I actually was

(03:56):
a boxer at the time, and so I was boxing
and he kept arranging fights for me, and I was like, no,
I don't think it's right to kind of beat people
up on Saturday and then go preach about love on Sunday.
And he um didn't believe me. So my mother suggested
would write him a letter of resignation. And I wrote
him a letter telling him that I was going against

(04:18):
the ministry, and he was like, oh, I guess this
is real. I preached my first sermon on my mother's birthday,
septem maybe. There were about seventy people there. My parents
were there, and I saw something I had never seen.
After I preached, my father stood up and testified and

(04:39):
he started to cry. My father didn't cry. I knew
my father had a complicated life. When I say a
complicated life, my father was into the numbers racket. Before
we had state lotteries, there was an underground mostly seen
as criminal ne work of people who would give people

(05:02):
to play the numbers for money. I mean it's tied
to the mob, to the mafia, and so my father,
my father killed people. So for him too to cry,
I mean that was you know when you talk about
Tony Soprano, you see it on TV. He literally lived
that life. And I think that was probably just the

(05:24):
first time out of maybe two times I ever saw
my father cry in his life.

MANGESH (05:30):
Sam was only twelve when he became a preacher, and
he fully absorbed this evangelical lesson that astrology is a sin.
He even preached a sermon warning against its evils. Besides,
the one time he did look up his horoscope, he
couldn't tell which sign he really was because his birthday
fell on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius, And as
far as he was concerned, it was a sin that

(05:53):
didn't even make sense.

SAM (05:54):
By the time I went into the ministry, I was
already convinced that astrology was hogwashed. You know, people asked
me what signer? You know, I'm the sign of the Cross.

(06:18):
My first year of college, I thought it would be
cool to take religion classes. Technically that was a mistake
because it made me start questioning my religion. I started
to have a crisis of faith. I started talking to
different ministers because I was like, well, how can I
really preach sincerely when I'm confused. Some of the ministers

(06:40):
I talked to, they were like, and it comes with
the job kit. My idea was to take a step
away from the ministry until I would recoup my faith.
But my faith never came back. By the time I
was twenty two, I had become an atheist.

MANGESH (06:54):
Newly liberated from his old beliefs, Sam headed to Temple University,
where he enrolled in the Africa An American Studies graduate program.
While he was there, he felt for one of his classmates.

SAM (07:05):
There was just one problem, and she was really into astrology,
and I was like, uh, you know, well, if I
had to choose between being an arachnid, a scorpio, and
a centaur, clearly on a centaur.

MANGESH (07:16):
How could Sam possibly impress this woman a Gemini who
teased him about not knowing his own sign.
She's like, no, I think you're the bug.
Finally he remembered something.

SAM (07:26):
There was a book when I was younger that my
great grandmother had. It's called the sixth and seventh Books of Moses.
It's a supposedly a magical text.

MANGESH (07:37):
He figured his crush would be blown away by a
copy of this strange book, so he starts making calls
and finally tracks it down at a North Philly bookstore.
But when he goes to pick it up,

SAM (07:48):
This guy starts talking to me about astrology and he's
an astrologer. At first I was like, and let me
just get the book, man, but then he's like, oh,
you ever had your chart done? It was like okay,
I agreed to get the reading. For the first fifty minutes,
I was convinced this is BS and he's like, oh,
it looks like your mom had some problems while carrying you.
In my head, I said, no, shit Sherlock, I mean,

(08:08):
I'm four, nine chances are I didn't have the normal birth.
And then he said, oh, well, it looks like you're
a pretty smart fellow. But again I was thinking, I
told you I was in the PhD program, and then
it happened. He said, it looks like the complications they
talked about what your mom may have been from some
involvement with your mother, your brother, and your father. What

(08:31):
do you mean, And he's like, yeah, some issues with
your father and your brother happened and then adversely affected
your mother. What I had learned two months before is
that my brother, when he was eight years old, my
mother was making kissing faces at him and playing with him.

(08:53):
And he said, oh, you're doing me like Daddy was
with that white women last night. And she's like, what
are you talking about, And she's like, Daddy was in
the front seat with this white woman making U kissing
noises and doing all this stuff and huffing and puffed.
He thought I was asleep, but I was just in
the back of the seat listening and looking at them.
And she was devastated. She caught the flu early in

(09:19):
her pregnancy with me. I guess compromised immune system from
emotional distress. So what that astrologer was describing was pretty
much exactly as it happened. And I don't know how
he did that, you know, I was blown away, and
so for me astrology became this other way of understanding

(09:42):
oneself that was independent of the political sphere. Even I
was like, well, maybe it's an interesting way of asking questions.

MANGESH (10:01):
These days, Sam still uses astrology to ask questions, but
he's found a lot of answers too. He's a mentor
to young astrologers just starting out and a co founder
of the International Society of Black Astrologers. He's developed a
perspective that's totally him, thoughtful, intellectual, and most of all,
driven by a desire to connect.

SAM (10:25):
Astrology is the net cultural experience of thousands of years
of looking at the heavens and their correlations in terms
of finding significance in our life. Now you could say, well,
you're just manufacturing it sure like everything else in your life.

(10:46):
I'm curious about people. I always have been. I wanted
to understand how people think, why they make the choices
that they do. So astrology gives me a way to
have discussions with people about themselves. It becomes a conversation
about how the astrology illuminates their lives rather than I

(11:08):
would say dictates their lives. The word consider it comes
from Latin for con which means with and sidire stars,
but means to think with your stars. So I see
astrology as a way to have a conversation, which is
more way of reflecting on yourself and your desires and
your character. The young Sam would be horrified by me

(11:33):
being an astrologer. But what I think would soften him
is recognizing some measure of his dream for his life,
which was to be communicating and messaging people around the world,
being able to do what I do and support myself.

(11:55):
I think that was making proud, but he probably like, well,
why can't you do that for Jesus? So um, I'd
probably like, you know, that's a longer conversation.

MANGESH (12:23):
Often there's a finality to the way people read astrology,
that what's destined to happen will happen. But Sam, as
he puts it, he doesn't use an astrological chart to
read your life as a finished biography, but instead as
a work in process. I love how there's an openness

(12:44):
to Sam, the way he believes so deeply, but how
he'll always listen with an open mind, how he doesn't
hesitate to take in your questions and your qualms and
to truly consider them because he isn't afraid to change
in his mind as long as he's thinking with the stars.

(13:17):
That's it for this week's episode of Skyline Drive. Special
thanks to my team here, Mary, Mitra, Mark, Anna and
Drew for working so hard over the holidays to pull
the show together, and Botany as always for the incredible soundtrack.
Also thank you to the wonderful Sam Reynolds for making
time for us to visit Sam on the web or
book reading with him. Be sure to go to Unlock

(13:38):
Astrology dot com. That's Unlock astrology dot com. Also a
quick shout out to my pal Laura Mayer, who did
this episode's warning, Laura not only helped us set up
things when we started Kaleidoscope, but also dropped one of
the biggest shows of the year, Shameless Acquisition Target. It
is so funny and if you want to know everything
about the podcast industry from one of its consummate insiders,

(14:00):
it is essential listening. We'll be back with full length
episodes next week, starting with a writer who just wants
to know. I had a question about like who's going
to die first, my mom and my dad, because there's
an answer that I want it's so dark. I mean,

(14:21):
it is dark, but it's also way more fun that
it sounds. That's it for this week's minisode. Thank you
so much for listening.