Welcome to this week’s edition of The Astral Correspondent, by Cristina Schreil! This week’s card is the Knight of Wands. Read more about what this newsletter is about here.

It is an oft-cited tale in San Francisco that Coit Tower — the curiously erect concrete cylinder extruding from Telegraph Hill — is a firehose nozzle. It’s also said that it was fashioned this way as a tribute to the firefighters of the 1906 earthquake and fire. 

Not true! Coit Tower’s emergence story is a little less direct. The tower was paid for from an endowment left by a rich person. Part of that money just happened to go toward a new design by the same architects for City Hall. It was not intended to look like a firehose. It was just fashioned in the Art Deco style of the time.

It makes sense, however, how the fire connection arose, because the endowment-leaving rich person was named Lillie Hitchcock Coit — and she was essentially a horse girl for firetrucks. The apocryphal tale about Coit Tower being a firehose likely sprang forth because Lillie’s ardor for firefighting was just as strikingly, gloriously turgid. 

This lady was hype about all of it: big blazes, engines, hoses. Probably the siren, and definitely the hats. She’d reportedly chase firetrucks, like a Labrador. 

Nicknamed “Firebelle Lil,” Coit lived in San Francisco in the late 1800s. At 15, her obsession with and reputation for firefighting zeal took root. She became a local hero: one day she saw the shorthanded Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 struggle to pull their engine up Telegraph Hill toward a blaze. She threw down her schoolbooks and joined in, screaming at onlookers to pull, too. Ever since, she became the “patroness” of the city’s firemen, often present at parades. As historical society Guardians of the City describes: “she was curiously fascinated by the red shirt and warlike helmet of the firemen and she gloried in the excitement of a big blaze.” She had big truck energy.

Firebell Lil was also dubbed a sort of risk-taking “eccentric.” She would wear trousers when women were still in big skirts and smoke cigars. She dressed like a man to enter North Beach gambling dens.

Guardians of the City explains the context: “San Francisco society of that day was exclusive and rigid. As the Hitchcocks were valued members, society frequently agonized over the vagaries of its Lillie. But she seems always to have done exactly as she pleased without giving real offense.” She sounds rad as fuck to be honest.

Firebell Lil always reminded me of the Knight of Wands. Not only does the suit of wands correspond to the element of fire, but also knights are all about taking action. Firebell Lil running, shouting, and activating others about fire is as close as it gets. 

There is a beautiful audacity to be authentic at the heart of his card. Knight of Wands enjoys being seen, strutting their whole selves in the same scintillatingly watchable way that Cardi B electrifies a crowd on stage or Steph Curry unleashes perfect threes while noshing on a mouthguard. To channel the Knight of Wands is to embrace a devil-may-care devotion to your own passions with just as much bravado. 

You probably have associations, too. Reply and tell me someone or something that reminds you of the Knight of Wands. (Your engagement with even a short reply helps this newsletter!)

Thanks for reading,

Cristina

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