If you have interacted with astrology in any way, you’ve probably heard of Sam Reynolds. With over 25 years of experience, Sam teaches, mentors, and serves on astrology organizational boards. He’s not only been witness to how astrology has changed over the past few decades but has had a hand in shaping that change as well.

I first met Sam at NORWAC where he did a lecture on astrology’s changing social place, bringing up complications in belief and race and accessibility. I was blown away by the talk. By the end, I was glad that I had come to the conference just because of that one lecture. We didn’t talk at the conference but, when I contacted him afterwards, he was open to doing mentorship sessions with me. We found out that we share the same Jupiter and that we even had a friend in common. Over the years, I’ve been lucky to have the chance to get to know Sam in small ways.

I’ve been wanting to start a series on interviewing different astrologers on their creative processes. Of course, the first person I asked was Sam. Here is an interview with Sam Reynolds about creative skepticism:


Alice Sparkly Kat: So, you're somewhat known as a skeptic within the astrological world.

Sam Reynolds: I describe myself as an in-house skeptic. I think outside skeptics of astrology are lazy. An in-house skeptic is someone who is familiar with astrology, knows astrology and is willing to express doubt—a questioning of astrology from an informed perspective. So I would say that's what I do. I’m willing to express doubt or ask questions—hard questions related to astrology—questions like “Can you find your own way to answers that are readily available?”

ASK: I'm wondering if you have a working definition for skepticism.

SR: It's a way of approaching certainty with doubt and questions. And it works both ways. It’s taking things that people view as certain, looking at it with doubt and it's also approaching certainty through doubt and questions.

ASK: Can skepticism ever be creative?

SR: That is how my experience with astrology deepened. Once I got to the point that I could see astrology working, not that I completely understood how it worked—I had my different theories at one time—but once I got to it working, then I could start refining my questions.

So, for instance, Well, why is Mars exalted in Capricorn? That was a really critical point and shift and I would say even accelerator to my learning because I almost abandoned astrology, because I was like well, I haven't been able to find any source materials on why these things are true and that was probably after 10 years of study. Wow! And reading particular books (I was reading more modern psychological astrology) I was kinda like, “Well, is astrology’s limit only that you can compare it to Freud and Jung and concepts of the unconscious and whatever that means?” That was important to me because I also had become critical of the unconscious as this liminal space. Either it was a space or it was an uncontested space of unawareness. I didn't fully understand why astrology was so linked to psychology, which I was already skeptical of.

I couldn’t find any source materials on why Mars was exalted in Capricorn or Saturn in fall in Aries and I was thinking like, well, maybe it’s just bullshit. Then, I discovered or actually I encountered Robert Zoller and medieval astrology and I started to see a logic at work and a logic that I could follow rather than a set of principles that have been used for thousands of years.

ASK: You’ve been around astrology for decades and work institutionally within astrology, within conferences like NORWAC and at ISAR. Who were some of the first astrologers you met?

SR: That’s actually a fascinating question because, for the first ten years of my study, I didn’t meet many astrologers at all. I was in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia in the nineties, to my knowledge, didn't have a vibrant astrological community. I didn't see anything related to astrology in the public sphere. I could find books at Barnes and Noble and Borders, but I rarely heard about any events. And I was kinda out there. I was often in Center City. I was active in the artist community.

I didn't meet actual astrologers until I got to New York. One of the first astrologers I reached out to I found out about from something published by NCGR. It was kind of like a schedule of events, including their conference, where you could take classes for their certification and I saw someone teaching rectification. And I wanted to learn rectification. So I called this number. I could tell he was a little older, he's a little fussy, and I was like, okay, I wanna learn rectification. He’s like “okay” and we were trying to figure out dates. I was just thinking in terms of my schedule and he says “I don’t hear any wrestling of paper where you would be checking an ephemeris.”

I was like “No.” He’s like, well, you know—“That’s important figuring out the alignment related to the day.” His name is Julian Armistead. He’s no longer with us but he changed my life in a very indirect and offhanded way that, you know, some white men can do. He was an older white man but he wasn’t overtly prejudiced or anything to me but I could tell when I went to his Upper West Side apartment that I wasn’t his usual student. I got the impression that I wasn’t his usual student and I was like “I want to learn rectification.” I told him why I was there and he changed my life. He said “I don’t know what you don’t know.”

I told him some books by name and he was like “Well, I still don’t know what you don’t know so I don’t know what to teach you” and he said “Well, maybe you might think to go to this conference or get involved in NCGR and come back to me.” I thought he was blowing me off on some level but I did. In the first conference I saw Shelly Ackerman and I did meet the author of a book I had called Love Planets Claudia Bader who’s become a friend of mine. Shelly became a friend of mine, a very good friend until she passed in 2020—not from COVID. She had cancer. So, I went to this conference and two or three significant events happened. I was the only person of color I could identify there. I took note of that. This wasn’t necessarily expected or unexpected. It was just something I had been used to going to a predominantly white college. There’s some places you go where you’re not going to see people of color.

Second thing was meeting Robert Zoller and specifically being introduced to medieval history and his saying in a room full of white people that “We, Europeans, owe a great debt to the Moors and to people of color for the restoration of astrology.” I literally looked around the room. Did I hear what he just said? What was the reaction of people around me? They were all attentive. I was like “Damn!” I just heard this white man for the first time in my life giving kudos to the Moors. Okay, so I talked to him about that, and told him that I was very impressed, and I went to study more, and he gave me information about how to do that.

The third thing—as I was leaving for lunch, I got on an escalator and there’s three white women in front of me. You’ve met me. I’m not that tall. I don’t think I’m imposing or intimidating like a burly Black man but I got on the escalator and I watched this white woman in front of me grab her purse. I was like, good to know that this is still here. What’s an interesting sidebar is that, the woman who did that, I actually became good friends with her later. I never forgot because she’s distinct looking and also I didn’t forget her. I don’t know if I brought it up with her.

ASK: Wow, so that was the first astrologer you met. Julian Armistead.

SR: Yeah, I’ve met other astrologers who are still in New York City. John Marchesella. Ken Kimball is no longer with us. Claudia Bader. They were all Aquarians or air signs so that’s interesting.

ASK: You’ve been in astrology for so long. I’m sure you’ve seen people come in and out and I guess diversity is changing. I’m wondering if you see any patterns around who stays and who goes.

SR: I would say, who stick around are the people who are more committed to the work and their deep interest and love of astrology rather than the attention they get from being an astrologer or from doing astrology.

There’s the pressure of doing astrology, especially as a consulting astrologer. It seems initially cool to be able to have an income doing astrology. There’s a psychic toll which isn’t just the toll of preparing, however long it takes you to prepare (beginner to intermediate students can take hours and then you get it down to an hour and then to some point where it can be fifteen minutes). But that’s not the real toll.

I actually watched an astrologer on Twitter break down to what she attributed to holding space for people and holding space for their secrets. I get tired of carrying all the secrets, is what I think she said. She’s not the only one I’ve seen make a full pop. She’s one of few. But what this one astrologer did was that she published a PDF. She basically put out the public information for every person she had read and basically ridiculed them. I dragged her because—what kind of person are you? That you publish people’s secrets and violate their trust? And she imploded. Then she transformed and became very religious and anti astrology.

ASK: Yeah, it’s the psychic toll. You know, I was going to ask you what it’s like establishing yourself in astrology and if there’s anything you know now that you wish you knew at the time but maybe it’s more interesting to ask you if there’s some ways that people can take care of themselves while doing this.

SR: I’ll answer both questions.

I don’t know if there's much I would change because I think it would require being in a different era. What I mean by that is because I had to rely more on books. I didn’t get on the web until the late nineties. I was eight years into studying astrology, mainly through books and talking to people, so it was a slow build. I didn’t have the intention of becoming an astrologer so it was more so to debunk astrology. I think that having that slow build gave me a different relationship to astrology without some of the attendant pressures and amassing too much information to where you can overdose and get confused a lot more easily.

As much as we’ve moved away from the predominance of psychological astrology, and I’m grateful I encountered that because it at least got into themes instead of techniques. I can give a critique to technique later but I think technique now is predominant. So, a lot of people stick to one technique but being the asshole that I am, channeling my inner asshole, I was like “the fuck?” What does it mean to have a Mercury who’s like your spear bearer? What does that mean? No, I know what it means in a human life but what does it mean astrologically? So, I came from an era where it was very humanistic and less about technique.

But if I had to change anything or if I could—I mean, I subscribe to the idea of amor fati, the idea of loving your fate—but if I magically could or would reshape things, I might have taken a little more time, maybe another year while I was getting certification and I would have immersed myself in classical texts, Valens and Abu M’ashar, rather than reading about them now. It’s kind of like playing catch up to reading some of these texts. Some of these things weren’t even available as translations and even still we need better translations. Some of the translations we have of Arabic speakers and thinkers, they’re not from Arabic but from Latin, so we need to acknowledge that too. Just something I would change. There’s diversification in astrology so I’m looking forward to more astrologers of different bents, of native speakers of Arabic being able to give some more of the nuances of Arabic material.

ASK: I have kind of a fun question for you. You talk a lot of shit about Libras and you’re also raised by Libras and love Libras.

SR: I’m listening.

ASK: What are some misconceptions that people have about Libras?

SR: You and I have talked about this so I know that you have a Libra partner. Yeah, I love Libras. Here’s the bottom line. The bottom line is that Libras is one of the only signs that can take a joke, right? In all of the years that I’ve been clowning Libras, I can think of one instance where a Libra was definitively offended. I’m an equal opportunity offender. I clown all the signs, especially Scorpios. But, yeah, Libra I come back to because I have the most fun with them because I know they can take it.

I was raised by a Libra. My mom was a double Libra. My father was a Moon in Libra. I don’t know their rising signs. I haven’t rectified them. I don’t have enough data. But with mom—she knew how to put a worm in my head. I would love to mess with my mother and when she decided to mess back, it would stick with me. I remember one time clowning her. I used to try to scare her. I put a plastic life-like looking spider under her pillow or under her blanket. I knew when she went to bed she would see it.

She didn’t wake me up and beat me down. She said, to scare me as I was trying to scare her, “what do you know about what I do at night? How do you know I don’t go out and drain people of their life and blood?” She looked dead serious and I was like “You don’t do that.” But how do you know? You don’t know. “Do you see me at night? How old are you?”

My parents gave me a great gift other than life and other than all the other necessities. I think back to one critical thing my mom shared with me. I had older siblings. My brother was into cars. My one sister was into modeling and fashion. My other sister was also into looking good and beautiful and I never forgot. I was like “What am I into?” I was like nine or maybe even a little younger. And my mom? She thought for a minute. I’ll never forget her answer. She looked at me and she said “You think.” That made me feel so good and appreciated because I felt like that was true.

Sometimes it annoyed her. She thought that “Why?” was gonna be written as an epitaph for me because I would ask, “Why? Why? Why anything? Everything?”

ASK: She saw that in you.

SR: Yeah.

ASK: You know, I saw this Youtube video of you I think at Minka Brooklyn and you were talking about the Zodiac Mafia and it almost looked like you were doing stand up comedy.

SR: I’ve not really done it but I’ve studied it a little bit. I joined Manhattan Comedy School but then classes got suspended because of COVID. It’s the only form of public speaking that I’ve not done and am slightly terrified by. I haven’t done stand up so that’s the aspiration.

ASK: My question is—does comedy have anything to do with skepticism?

SR: One of the things that's interesting about the history of comedy is that it takes what we believe for certain or acknowledge as authority with certainty and it pokes fun at it in order to get us to think. That's the best gift of comedy. It's always a dubious thing because we can always go too far with it which is the question that we are entertaining broadly as a culture especially in America, and I think it's a fascinating social moment.

ASK: You have so much material out there about Jupiter, including writing about Jupiter returns, a lecture about Jupiter return on the NORWAC store, and were interviewed about Jupiter on The Astrology Podcast—did you gravitate to Jupiter intentionally or did it happen naturally since your chart ruler is Jupiter?

SR: Now, first let me say that Jupiter is my least favorite planet.

ASK: It’s your chart ruler.

SR: Yeah, he’s my chart ruler. But if you would ask me like, well, “do you love your chart ruler?" Nope. I respect him, but I don't love him. So, that sounds fucked up. It sounds personal. Maybe it is. That motherfucker really bothers me a little bit. It’s ironic. It’s the height of irony. I have so much of my career tied to Jupiter.

I started thinking about the Jupiter return. It didn't seem to line up with what I discovered. So, a lot of people talk about Jupiter returns as if this is your lucky time. This is your time for things to open up, almost as if, like the windows of heaven open up, and the divine, the Cosmos pours out blessings on you. I would read a stranger just saying that and then kind of look at my notes, and like this shit doesn't line up. You could say that debunks astrology. I came to a different realization because it's not as if every Jupiter return for every person is fucked up. It's just that not every Jupiter return turns out to be auspicious for every person and there might be some reasoning why. How I got into Jupiter returns in the first place comes from where most of my scholarship comes from which is thinking about people’s real lives and circumstances. I’ll be honest related to their pain. A Philly author named Ed Shockley—he’s a playwright, another Aquarian— he said something off handedly. “Humor is based on pain.” All humor is based on pain, is what he said. I wanted to contradict that. I’ve tried for thirty years. Oh, that can’t be true. It’s mostly true. I don’t know if it’s always true but it’s mostly true.

So, how I got into Jupiter return is that I discovered that Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, New Yorkers who were killed by cops, were both twenty three years old. I was like “Well, what happens at twenty three?” That’s an odd thing. I hadn’t realized that that was within the window of the second Jupiter return. I spent the whole night looking up Jupiter returns and it blew my mind. I saw auspicious ones like Malcolm X’s discovering the Nation of Islam to George Clooney working on a show called E/R before he got on another show called ER and that catapulted him into a different sphere. Madonna, first record contract at twenty three. Mahatma Gandhi got on his path. I remember that night and reading Wikipedia and discovering that there are some things that happen at twenty three at the second Jupiter return.

But here’s these two men Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell who weren’t that lucky at all, right? Empirically.

So what went wrong? I found other examples. This is what I like to point out on Twitter and some people might have the wrong impression if they follow my feed. “He hated Jupiter returns!” I don’t hate them. I just don’t think they are what people think they are. They’re not moments where the heavens open up and everything pours out.

I’ve come to define Jupiter return as the moment where you can be attuned to your excellence or your excesses. If you are attuned to your excesses, you will suffer. If you are committed to your excellences, Jupiter is a match funder and likely, by signification, to match you. Now, we can say that’s the cosmos. That’s just opportunity. I subscribe to Seneca’s paraphrase which is that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.

ASK: That’s the misconception that people have of Jupiter.

SR: Yeah. Jupiter is automatically gonna be good and do good things for you. Maybe not.

ASK: I’m kind of curious. I know I didn’t send this to you but I’m kind of curious. What were you doing at twenty three?

SR: So, that is the moment, I went to see an astrologer. It was a moment of turbulence and change for me. I was in my second year of my graduate program in African American studies. I was having some serious doubts about my academic future and specifically my future in that program, losing faith in Afrocentricity and the idea of it. I had some significant questions that were not being addressed. It wasn't so much that I thought I could find the answers for them in or through astrology but I was looking to understand more about myself and realizing that the racial or racialized lens would only go so far with it. So I was in therapy. I was going through the throws of a failed relationship which is not that unusual for a 23 year old.

So I went to see this astrologer. I went to him basically on a lark and to set up a Gemini. I had some extra cash. In retrospect, it didn’t cost that much. 65 dollars. He said “Just bring 2 blank cassettes, and you know I'll talk to you about your chart for 90 min.” So first within the first few minutes he confirmed I was under the sign of the Bug. So I'm like this is bullshit. I was just like this is a waste of money cause he was saying things that I think you could just do a cold reading of, like “Oh, I think you're a pretty smart guy.” I didn't say it. I just listened. The typical Scorpio thing with giving nothing away but when he said that, I was like “Well, I told you I was in a PhD program. Chances are I’m not an idiot. I hope you can do better.”

Then he said “Well, it looks like there's some complications related to your birth.” I don't know. I imagine I squinted at him. Then he said “Well, it looks like you're there's some kind of complication between your mother, your father, and maybe your brother.” I kind of looked at him and was like, “Wait, what do you mean?”

I learned in August that my brother had essentially told my mother that my father was having an affair which put her in an emotional tailspin and complicated her pregnancy with me. She got complicated by, I guess, the emotional toil on her and she got the flu.

ASK: I actually have one more question for you. You reference different forms of astrology, Western, non Western, medieval, psychological. I’ve heard you talk about the Moon’s nodes, nodal bendings, traditional techniques, you entertain the outer planets—

SR: I use them. I use the outer planets. I don’t use them as rulers.

ASK: I know that you started out as a Christian also and then became Muslim.

SR: Christian, atheist, then Muslim.

ASK: I’m wondering—is skepticism an important part of working with different perspectives and of spiritual change?

SR: I think doubt is a remarkably useful tool related to love. This is something I get from a seminal religious thinker and writer named Richard Smoley. He wrote a book on love and one of the things that he talks about which left a very lasting impression on me was the relationship between doubt and love.

Doubt becomes useful in love in a very specific way because when you have some inkling of doubt related to your partner, for example, it can keep love alive because then you’re not going with the presupposition that I got them. There’s always some way in which you know things could change. It's room for change. Rather than thinking like you know with absolute certainty there's always some useful dimensions of doubt.

I think there's a useful thing to keep in mind with astrology and any measure of spiritual endeavor. That seems like the polar opposite of faith. I don’t think so. Faith? Is that relying on certainty? I think that is more belief. I think Faith is where you're moving along with uncertainty and still trusting that what you fundamentally perceive and understand could be true. No, you don't have any certainty that it is true, but you have faith. It's like walking in a dark room.

I think it's useful to have some aspects of doubt. The astrologer might say, you know, looking at your Venus Mars square it indicates this. Well, again, why does it indicate this thing? Is it possible it could indicate another set of things?

I have a practice. I didn't realize it was a practice but every seven years everything I believe goes on the chopping block.

I know I pissed Chris [Brennan] running off one time talking about astrology as a form of literature. He got pissed and we had a little bit of a minor debate on Twitter. This was about 4 years ago. Basically he thought I was saying astrology was a fiction. I wasn’t saying that it was fiction like a novel but we can’t ignore that astrology acts more like a palimpsest. We’re writing more and more and clearing slates and writing on top of it and writing notes on top of Ptolemy. Does it mean it's not fully empirical? It's never been. It's not fully philosophical. Never been. It’s never been fully mathematical. It's never been fully astronomical. What it has been consistently in its history is literary.


Sam’s advice to young astrologers:

Don’t be in a rush to read or get into business. Leave time for study.
Have consistency. The people who have longevity in astrology have consistency. That’s not just consistency and the quality of their work, which is important, but consistency in doing it.
Stay open to all forms of astrology.
Know your why.