January 10, 2023 • 14 mins
Skyline Drive has been selected as an Apple Podcasts Series Essential!
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
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Speaker 1 (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.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
At the very beginning of this show, we set out
to find people with unusual stories biographies that upended 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
(00:51):
to guide their process, towns that have built their entire
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
(01:13):
of really strong beliefs and then dive headfirst into another.
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.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I went to an astrologer to set up a gemini.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
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 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's kind of defied expectations at every point of
his life. And what makes them so fascinating to me
(01:53):
at least is that in this search for faith and
love and a truer understanding of humanity, he moves with
such grace and assuredness 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 iHeart Podcast, I'm Mongaish articular. Welcome to Skyland Drive,
(02:51):
minnesot too. Sam.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I did feel a calling, literally, hearing a voice in
my head, you know, a calling into the ministry saying
I want 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 didn't believe me. So my mother suggested we
write him a letter of resignation, and I wrote him
a letter telling him that I was going into the ministry,
(04:18):
and he was like, oh, I guess.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
This is real.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I preached my first sermon on my mother's birthday, September
twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. 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 he started to cry. My father didn't cry.
(04:44):
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 news, work of people who would get
people to play the numbers for money. I mean it's
(05:05):
tied to the mob, to the mafia, and so my father,
my father killed people. So for him 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 first time
out of maybe two times ever saw my father cry
(05:29):
in his life.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 3 (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, it comes with the job, kid.
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.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Newly liberated from his old beliefs. Sam headed to Temple University,
where he enrolled in the Africa American Studies graduate program.
While he was there, he fell for one of his classmates.
There was just one problem, and.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
She was really into astrology, and I was like, uh,
you know, well, if I had to choose between being
an Iraq nid a scorpio and a centaur. Clearly, I'm
a centaur.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
How could sem possibly impress this woman a Gemini who
teased him about not knowing his own sign.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
She's like, no, I think you're the bug.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Finally he remembered something.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
There was a book when I was younger that my
great grandmother had. It's called the six seven eight Books
of Moses. It's supposedly a magical text.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 3 (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 hmm, okay,
I agreed to get the reading. For the first fifteen 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, sir, a lock.
(08:08):
I mean I'm four to 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 a
PhD program, and then it happened. He said, it looks
like the complications I talked about with your mom may
have been from some involvement with your mother, your brother,
(08:29):
and your father. What do you mean And he's like, yeah,
some issues with your father and your brother happened, and
then it 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
(08:51):
him and playing with him. And he said, oh, you're
doing me like Daddy was with that white woman 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 kissing noises and doing all this stuff and huffing
and puffed, and he thought I was sleep but I
was just in the back of the seat listening and
looking at them. And she was devastated. She caught the
(09:18):
flu early in 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, it was
blown away. And so for me, astrology became this other
(09:41):
way of understanding oneself that was independent of the political sphere.
Even I was like, well, maybe it's an interesting way
of asking questions.
Speaker 2 (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,
(10:21):
driven by a desire to connect.
Speaker 3 (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. 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 would
(11:08):
say dictates their lives. The word consider comes from Latin
for con which means with and sadira 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.
(11:31):
The young Sam would be horrified by me 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
(11:53):
to do what I do and support myself. I think
that was make him proud. But he'd probably like, well,
why can't you do that for Jesus? So I'd probably
be like, yeah, that's a longer conversation.
Speaker 2 (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 a 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 Mitro, Mark, Anna and
Threw 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 of reading with him. Be sure to go to
(13:38):
unlock Astrology dot com. That's unlock astrology dot com.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Also a quick shout out to my pal Laura Mayer,
who did this episode's warning. Laura not only helped us
set up.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Things when we started Kaleidoscope, but also.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
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 inside, it is essential listening.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
We'll be back with full length episodes next week, starting
with a writer who just wants to know.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I had a question about like, who's going to die first?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
My mom and our dad because there's an answer that
I want.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
It's so dark.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I mean, it is dark, but it's also way more
fun than it sounds. That's it for this week's Minisot.
Thank you so much for listening.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
At the very beginning of this show, we set out
to find people with unusual stories biographies that upended 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
(00:51):
to guide their process, towns that have built their entire
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
(01:13):
of really strong beliefs and then dive headfirst into another.
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.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I went to an astrologer to set up a gemini.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
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 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's kind of defied expectations at every point of
his life. And what makes them so fascinating to me
(01:53):
at least is that in this search for faith and
love and a truer understanding of humanity, he moves with
such grace and assuredness 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 iHeart Podcast, I'm Mongaish articular. Welcome to Skyland Drive,
(02:51):
minnesot too. Sam.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I did feel a calling, literally, hearing a voice in
my head, you know, a calling into the ministry saying
I want 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 didn't believe me. So my mother suggested we
write him a letter of resignation, and I wrote him
a letter telling him that I was going into the ministry,
(04:18):
and he was like, oh, I guess.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
This is real.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I preached my first sermon on my mother's birthday, September
twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. 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 he started to cry. My father didn't cry.
(04:44):
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 news, work of people who would get
people to play the numbers for money. I mean it's
(05:05):
tied to the mob, to the mafia, and so my father,
my father killed people. So for him 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 first time
out of maybe two times ever saw my father cry
(05:29):
in his life.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 3 (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, it comes with the job, kid.
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.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Newly liberated from his old beliefs. Sam headed to Temple University,
where he enrolled in the Africa American Studies graduate program.
While he was there, he fell for one of his classmates.
There was just one problem, and.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
She was really into astrology, and I was like, uh,
you know, well, if I had to choose between being
an Iraq nid a scorpio and a centaur. Clearly, I'm
a centaur.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
How could sem possibly impress this woman a Gemini who
teased him about not knowing his own sign.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
She's like, no, I think you're the bug.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Finally he remembered something.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
There was a book when I was younger that my
great grandmother had. It's called the six seven eight Books
of Moses. It's supposedly a magical text.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 3 (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 hmm, okay,
I agreed to get the reading. For the first fifteen 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, sir, a lock.
(08:08):
I mean I'm four to 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 a
PhD program, and then it happened. He said, it looks
like the complications I talked about with your mom may
have been from some involvement with your mother, your brother,
(08:29):
and your father. What do you mean And he's like, yeah,
some issues with your father and your brother happened, and
then it 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
(08:51):
him and playing with him. And he said, oh, you're
doing me like Daddy was with that white woman 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 kissing noises and doing all this stuff and huffing
and puffed, and he thought I was sleep but I
was just in the back of the seat listening and
looking at them. And she was devastated. She caught the
(09:18):
flu early in 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, it was
blown away. And so for me, astrology became this other
(09:41):
way of understanding oneself that was independent of the political sphere.
Even I was like, well, maybe it's an interesting way
of asking questions.
Speaker 2 (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,
(10:21):
driven by a desire to connect.
Speaker 3 (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. 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 would
(11:08):
say dictates their lives. The word consider comes from Latin
for con which means with and sadira 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.
(11:31):
The young Sam would be horrified by me 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
(11:53):
to do what I do and support myself. I think
that was make him proud. But he'd probably like, well,
why can't you do that for Jesus? So I'd probably
be like, yeah, that's a longer conversation.
Speaker 2 (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 a 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 Mitro, Mark, Anna and
Threw 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 of reading with him. Be sure to go to
(13:38):
unlock Astrology dot com. That's unlock astrology dot com.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Also a quick shout out to my pal Laura Mayer,
who did this episode's warning. Laura not only helped us
set up.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Things when we started Kaleidoscope, but also.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
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 inside, it is essential listening.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
We'll be back with full length episodes next week, starting
with a writer who just wants to know.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I had a question about like, who's going to die first?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
My mom and our dad because there's an answer that
I want.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
It's so dark.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I mean, it is dark, but it's also way more
fun than it sounds. That's it for this week's Minisot.
Thank you so much for listening.
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