PIERCING THE VEIL: WE’RE ALL “SINNERS”

By JILLIAN KRISTINA

I’m writing this on a stormy day. The energy has been heavy and thick since sunrise, and a sadness seems to have settled in the trees. It’s palpable, and people are feeling it… Some more than others. Some people are more sensitive to energetic shifts; subtleties that seep into your pores, infusing your vision with an ethereal perspective. You can sense a person before they speak, their very presence shouting from a mile away, communicating in a language as primal as the ground on which we stand. Your blood quickens, sensing a new current – a wild one. One with teeth.

“They told stories of a god above and a devil below, and lies of a dominion of man over beast on Earth. We are earth and beast and god, We are women and man. We are connected, you and I, to everything.”

In Ryan Coogler’s 2025 lyrical, blood-soaked supernatural blockbuster SINNERS, It’s 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, and notorious identical twins and WWI veterans Elijah and Elias Moore, known as Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), have returned home after seven years in Chicago, bringing big money and big aspirations with them. Money and ambition rival only their music – the blues – intricately woven into and throughout the fluid, shape-shifting bodies that come together to bring Smoke and Stack’s vision of a juke joint to life on one fateful, beautiful day… and almost endless night.

“Ain’t no love in the heat of the sun. Sing my song until the day is done.”

All day, the twins gather people and supplies to fill an old sawmill they bought to raise the venue before nightfall, including their own cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton). Known as Preacherboy on account of his father serving as a local pastor, Sammie’s passion for guitar and singing the blues rivals his father’s plans for him, which are to follow in his patriarchal footsteps. He warns his son, before he heads out to join the twins that night, that nothing good would come of him pursuing his passion, let alone engaging with them.

“You keep dancing with the devil; one day he’s going to follow you home.”

The Devil is a polarizing and divisive figure, especially with the more fundamentalist folk. Historically, the Devil is all that is evil, tempting and damning. He is the root of all that is wrong and bad and taboo, leaving no room for interpretation into something more dynamic. More paradoxical. More inclusive. Maybe the Devil encompasses the parts of ourselves, the powerful, empowered parts, that threaten those who benefit from us staying small and staying scared of ourselves and the true magic that we possess. The magic that’s been caged… until now.

“There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future…This gift can bring healing to their communities, but it also attracts evil.”

When Sammie plays, a portal opens. His voice reverberates with the soul and gravity of the ancestors; he becomes a channel – a beacon – for those who came before and those who seek a connection to their own past, now. The people filling the juke that night came to feel a connection to themselves, each other, and that elusive taste of something they’ve been abhorrently denied: freedom. A place where they can not only exist as themselves, but they can indulge in the physical and sensory delights that only liberation can offer. This place represents a safe haven that literally shines as the souls within expand and connect beyond themselves, defying time and space. For this one night, they dance alongside the ghosts of those who bore them, in their joys and passions and struggles and relentless refusal to lay down.

“It’s magic what we do. It’s sacred. And big…With this here ritual, we heal our people. And we be free.”

As the music and their voices and light rise above and beyond them, someone else takes notice. Someone who has been roaming in the dark for a long, long time. Someone who feels the disconnection from his land, from his people, to such depths that he’s ready to do whatever it takes to get it back. Because sometimes, so many times, when people shine so bright, those who have lost their light take notice. They want to feel it again, and are not only ready, but ecstatic, to have that light by any means possible.

“Sammie! You the one I came for. I sensed you. I wanna see my people again. I’m trapped here. But your gifts can bring ‘em to me.”

Remmick (Jack O’Connell) approaches the juke from the shadows, a ravenous fire burning behind his eyes. Traveling with him are Bert (Peter Dreimanis) and Joan (Lola Kirke), two klansfolk who happened to succumb to Remmick’s desperate pleas to let him in one evening, while the sun still hung dangerously in the sky. All three now walk by night, and together, they approach the bustling mill, so alive with music and revelry and just so much to eat… 

“This ain’t no juke joint, no club. This here’s a slaughterhouse.”

And yet, they’re denied entry. Even when they burst into song, showing Smoke and Stack all they can offer inside those doors. But Remmick is sick and tired of being denied. He longs for the faces of his people, the songs from his long-lost Ireland that helped him feel something, anything, other than this endless bloodlust in a foreign land. He longs for his ancestors, to see them, reunite with them. He longs for connection, the same way every human on this planet does. He longs for home, but the void inside of him is endless. He feeds and turns others into his family, sharing his memories with them – and theirs with him. He knows their mother tongues, and they sing the songs and dance the jigs of his lineage, joining in a gruesomely gorgeous chorus beneath the light of a full moon. And yet, in creating a new family for himself, he robs each of their own. He takes their lives, their experiences, their choices. He consumes them and asks them to consume for him, with only the promise of fellowship and love and eternity, roaming places as foreign to them as this land is to him. He takes life to fill the void, only to expand the nothingness with each new victim. 

But not Sammie. Not the one he came for, because Sammie makes his own decisions. At every turn, Sammie is told what to do by his father or by the twins, and yet, he stands on that hill and holds that guitar. Even standing on the banks of flesh and fire, staring into the Devil’s mouth, Sammie says no. He says no to all of the voices telling him, for his own protection, to turn away from his passions, his true loves. The calling within him is greater than the opposition he faces, and as he returns with a slashed face, barely alive, still, he stands his ground. Still, he grips that guitar. Still, he drives in the direction of his desires, never once doubting himself or that life will rise to meet him if he just says yes to himself. In doing this, Sammie meets the Devil head-on and politely tells him, Not today. Sammie sets himself free.

We can see Sammie’s journey through these five cards: Three of Cups, Two of Pentacles, Seven of Wands, King of Pentacles and Page of Pentacles. These cards weave themes of ancestral healing and celebration, of focusing on what’s important to you, of remaining vigilant in the face of opposition so that you can share from your unique lived experiences, and carry your personal strengths and acts of service out into the world. Sammie brought the blues to the world, even though he was told he’d never make it. He felt the power of his bloodline rushing through him, urging him on. He knew, deep in his heart, that this was his calling, and that the world needs it. Let the New Moon in Gemini help you remember your unique calling. Let the powers of the Gemini twins help you access all parts of yourself, beyond simply reason and logic. Reach back through your bloodline and invite your benevolent ancestors in to help you recover not just parts of yourself, but parts of your lineage that didn’t have the same opportunities to grow and evolve and shine the way that you do now. Ask them how you can be of service. Ask them how you can help them heal. Ask them to direct you when you feel lost and unsure. They’re part of our internal compasses; we just have to ask and stay long enough to listen.

“Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. Nah, son. We brought this with us from home.”