Romanistan

Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling Preview!

• Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens • Season 4 • Episode 11

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What hidden wisdom lies within the centuries-old practice of Romani fortune telling? Join us as Paulina and Jez preview their debut book, Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling. In this book, they not only share the spiritual techniques and business insights of fortune telling but also unravel the cultural significance and personal stories steeped in Romani heritage. Picture yourself in a Romani fortune teller's shop, with the warmth of blessed candles and the aromatic waft of incense, as you learn about the history and respect due to this age-old practice. You can read the full 2 chapter preview here, or on our website.

Our book tour has been announced on romanistanpodcast.com and our GoFundMe to make our book tour a reality. Come see us live, and if you can donate, you can get prizes like a shoutout on the podcast, a book plate, a tarot greeting card, a signed copy, & tarot readings with us! 

Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.

You can find us on Instagram and Facebook @romanistanpodcast, and on Twitter @romanistanpod. To support us, Join our Patreon for extra content or donate to Ko-fi.com/romanistan, and please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us so much. 

Follow Jez on Instagram @jezmina.vonthiele & Paulina @romaniholistic. 

Preorder our book, Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, available from Weiser Books in October 2024. 

Email us at romanistanpodcast@gmail.com for inquiries. 

Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens

Conceived of by Paulina Stevens

Edited by Viktor Pachas

With Music by Viktor Pachas

And Artwork by Elijah Vardo



Paulina:

Welcome to Romanistan.

Jezmina:

We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies. I'm Paulina and I'm Jez, and we are here reading you our preview of Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling. You can read the preview, which is the first couple of chapters, on our website, romanasanpodcastcom. We'll have it up in a blog post and there will be a link to the preview as well as where you can buy the book. Right now it's available for pre-order on Amazon, bookshoporg, barnes, noble, really anywhere. Google it, see where it comes, and you can ask your local bookshops or libraries to carry it as well. That's a nice way to pre-order and we are going to read the intro to you as a little mini audio book, just for your listening pleasure. Here we go.

Paulina:

Welcome to Fortune Telling. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies.

Jezmina:

Imagine you were born into an ancient tradition of divination that has been passed down from generation to generation for your culture's survival. Perhaps reader you were, in which case you know the heaviness, responsibility and resilience braided into such a lineage. If you cannot relate or cannot imagine, then come with us into a world that is unknown to most.

Paulina:

Someone comes into your shop, announced by the tinkling bells you hung on the handle for protection. You call out welcome and tell them you're offering tarot, palm tea leaf and coffee readings and other holistic services. You see the guest's eyes take in walls draped with tapestries and floors covered in Turkish rugs and the stained glass window you had custom-made to add color. A warm but subtle light emanates from the assortment of lamps swathed in bright scarves, as well as the candles you blessed, oiled and lit this morning, along with other rolled incense on your shop's altar. You gesture over to the apothecary, lined with herbs, spices, teas and supplements. Some are from your culture, some not. But then Romani culture has borrowed and given so much all over the world that sometimes the lines blur even for you. The guest walks once around the shop glancing at the hand-dipped candles, incense cones, oils and elixirs, statues, herb bundles and crystals. You wonder if they know who you are, what the sign Romani Holistic means outside your shop, if they have any fears or even hatred towards gypsies.

Jezmina:

Let me know if you have any questions. You say how much is a reading, they ask. You lead them over to a comfortable chair and sit across from them. You shuffle the deck of cards on the round table in front of you, decorated with a mangano calcite to enhance empathy and a black moonstone for grounding and spiritual protection. You skipped the small talk. That's something you love about this job. You cut right to what's important. You just met, but the guest is crying in front of you, telling you they feel just so lost. You offer them a tissue from a marble box and you feel a wave of compassion for this perfect stranger and shift that energy into the cards as you're shuffling, asking them your ancestors, your spirit guides, or maybe Odell or Devel God or whichever gods you choose to help. You. Give them some answers so they can find their footing and take their own confident steps out again.

Paulina:

How did you even get here Pulling cards with a stranger telling them about their life? The real question is how could you not? You've tried to put them away the cards, the teacups, the porcelain diagrams of secrets written on the palms. But they call you. They call your blood and bones. That's why you are here.

Jezmina:

To understand the true art of Romani fortune telling and the secrets of intuition. We will share some spiritual techniques and business acumen, but more than that, we will share our beliefs, culture, history, trauma, resilience and our stories. All of these make up the much misunderstood, maligned and misrepresented practice of Romani divination. No one really knows what it means to be a gypsy, except the gypsies themselves, and even among us that can mean different things. We are just two people who have come together to share our little slice of Romanistan and what we love about it and what we wish for our future.

Paulina:

In this book, Paulina and Jasmina will introduce you to the history of the Romani people and their infamous relationship to fortune, as well as the labor of divination methods, tools and techniques that Roma created, adapted or popularized, as fortune-telling is both a job and a spiritual practice for Roma, we are particularly excited to share tips on how to use intuition as a practical tool for survival and how to emulate the professional polish that Roma have perfected over the centuries.

Jezmina:

We share our knowledge from personal experiences of being raised to be fortune tellers, but it's important to us that readers realize we are only speaking from our experiences, as we do not speak for all Roma, nor do we want to. We will, however, share additional resources here and on Romanistan podcast for you to explore.

Paulina:

At the same time, it's important to understand that a lot of Romani culture is closed to outsiders. There is much that we cannot and will not share. Some of what we share has already made its way into mainstream culture through centuries of coexistence. Some of our practices and beliefs overlap with or parallel other cultures, and some may be unique to us, but we will not publicize anything that is considered truly secret or sacred. We also acknowledge that in the movement toward better Romani representation, we, as Roma, need to share more of our culture than many of us are used to in order to help people understand us, order to help people understand us, support us, respect us and learn how to avoid cultural appropriation and instead engage in cultural exchange In the spirit of sharing. We will tell you a little about how we each came to fortune. Telling Paulina's story, I was raised within my Machuaya Romani family's fortune-telling and wellness traditions. Machuaya is the name of a Romani Vita or clan who mostly settled in Serbia. My family's bloodline is Romani, but also consists of South Asian, middle Eastern and Eastern European descent. Because of our travels, my parents owned spiritual shops throughout San Francisco, los Angeles and the central coast of California, and I was taught tarot, palmistry, coffee readings, energy healing and how to work with teas and spices to balance the body and spirit. Growing up poor, my mother would cook every day and shop at the farmer's market in front of our home. Poor, my mother would cook every day and shop at the farmer's market in front of our home. Our home doubled as the town's local metaphysical shop because we usually lived in our shops. From an early age, I was taught the benefit of eating whole foods grown locally. Holistic health and spirituality were the only things I was allowed to do as a child and young adult. Growing up in my community, I was isolated from the outside world. Our elders believed this was allowed to do. As a child and young adult Growing up in my community, I was isolated from the outside world. Our elders believed this was necessary to preserve our ways and rich cultural traditions. There are countless aspects of my heritage that I'm truly in love with, including our language, cuisine, arts, music and passion. I believe we must fight to keep our traditions, too, and perhaps learn to adapt some others. But I also needed to strike out on my own path, and that meant breaking the unwritten laws my people have practiced for thousands of years.

Paulina:

I am the subject of the Los Angeles Times podcast series Foretold, which tells the story of my decision to leave my arranged marriage and traditional community and navigate a new way of life. I am the subject of the Los Angeles Times podcast series Foretold, which tells the story of my decision to leave my arranged marriage and traditional community and navigate a new way of life, walking between the romani world and the non-romani world. In my professional life, I combine my family's way of traditional romani divination and fortune telling with modern whole body wellness techniques. Inspired by the holistic health movement and my life experience, romani Holistic, my California new age shop and private practice, was born. I earned a wellness coaching certificate and later began collaborating with nutritionists and herbalists to create comprehensive plans for clients that cater to body and soul. At Romani Holistic, we focus on addressing the physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual components of health. We continue to use herb, spice and plant remedies, as well as the same fortune-telling and spiritual guidance methods of my ancestors. Along with being a holistic practitioner, I am currently a student of biotechnology and I love studying where science and spirituality meet. I hope to share our methods and continue along the way.

Paulina:

In the los angeles times podcast series foretold, I explain how because I was only allowed to be a fortune teller once.

Paulina:

Once I left my small community, I briefly gave up fortune telling, divination and most cultural practices I grew up with at the time and at the time resented it altogether. I blamed all of our practices for the hardships I dealt with, such as arranged teen marriage, exposure to crime, being taken out of elementary school and other intergenerational trauma. I didn't want my daughters to experience the same cycle and when I became aware of it, I felt that my whole life and spiritual practice were alive. While taking time to heal, I poured myself into education, the history of my people and the origins of our practices. I came to understand the difference between culture and the symptoms of systemic racism. Obviously, I have grown from that experience and I understand that Romani crime is not inherent to our culture but a result of oppression and internalized prejudice and sexism oppression and internalized prejudice and sexism. I couldn't let go of my connection to my culture, our holistic way of living, our superstitions and deep-rooted spirituality, no matter how hard I tried. I came back to my practice stronger and more passionate Jasmina's story.

Jezmina:

I am from a mixed and assimilated family, meaning that I did not grow up in a traditional community, and only my maternal grandmother is Romani. Her vizia is called Sinti, a subgroup of Roma that mostly settled in Germany, Austria and parts of Italy. My grandmother grew up in Germany during World War II 1939-1945, when Roma and Sinti were violently persecuted as targeted ethnic groups during the Holocaust. World War II shattered many Romani and Sinti families through execution and imprisonment, and many were forced to run and hide. My family survived through a mixture of hiding and assimilating through extreme measures that even I don't know all the details of. Before the war, my great-great-grandmother, Matilda, danced and read fortunes in her family tradition under the stage surname that she adopted, Vontila, a name that is not Romani but indicates royalty. She was essentially branding herself, making the most of the stereotype of the gypsy princess. As part of her performance, she and her husband taught my grandmother and her siblings everything they could about their culture and trades in secret.

Jezmina:

My grandmother came to the United States after the war was over because Germany was still an extremely unsafe place for Roma, jewish people and other persecuted minorities to be, and even difficult for many white German citizens too. She married an American soldier she barely knew and traveled to America on a ship alone, speaking no English. It gave my grandmother an opportunity to reinvent herself in a new country. My grandmother was proud of being Romani, but due to prejudice, she felt she had to keep it a secret in the US too, even from her own children, until they were more grown and could be trusted to be quiet about it. My grandmother told fortunes in the neighborhood to make friends and to do what she loved, but it was a secret homage to her family. She was very poor, but she didn't take money for fortune telling because she was afraid of being perceived as a gypsy, but she accepted food or coffee in exchange. This is one of the reasons my grandmother didn't encourage her children to tell fortunes, though she did teach them some things. Either way. She said my mother and auntie weren't cut out for fortune telling because my mother only saw misfortune and my auntie was too anxious. Both are bad for business, so my mother and auntie worked with horses another popular trade and had a number of other jobs. My grandmother passed away in 2023 and we were very close. She said that when I was born, she realized that if she didn't pass on our culture, it would be lost. She started training me to be a fortune teller when I was four or five years old through dream interpretation, ancestor veneration, plant and animal relationships and meditative prayer and the divination tools themselves. It was the most joyful part of my childhood. She had me reading professionally at parties when I was a preteen. She taught me everything she remembered from her own fragmented relationship with Romani culture. I am very aware of both the cultural loss, but also the privilege that comes from being assimilated. It is not the same at all as growing up traditionally and immersed in community At the same time. Many folks of Romani descent are mixed, assimilated and navigating what that all means. So I'm sharing my experience as a mixed and assimilated person of Romani heritage, but this, too, is part of the diverse Romani experience.

Jezmina:

I offer tarot, palm and tea leaf readings in person and online, as well as mentorship. My sessions are conversational and goal-oriented. I want to help you shake off what's holding you back, discover your potential and move down helpful paths to get you where you want to be. I love reading for any kind of client who finds me, and I specialize in working with artists, writers, performers or folks who are looking to access more self-expression and creativity in their day-to-day lives.

Jezmina:

I studied English and creative writing and have worked in performance art, multimedia arts and taught as an adjunct college professor and a middle school humanities teacher. I edit books and coach writers and other creators, and I've published poetry and fiction and nonfiction under the name Jessica Reedy as well. I began using the stage name Jasmina Von Tila in 2014 because fortune telling and performance work were at odds with the university jobs that I was pursuing, and I kept using it. Jasmina is a combination of nicknames my mother had for me as a kid in the name of my auntie, zina, whom I adored. I borrow Von Tila from my great-great-grandmother, matilda, in honor of her perseverance and success.

Jezmina:

I have also had training in trauma sensitivity through my work and training as a yoga teacher through Kripalu and the Trauma Center at JRI, and while I am not a therapist and I am not trying to be, I enjoy supporting folks working through their trauma as one facet of a holistic approach to healing. I'm not afraid to witness the hardest parts of the human experience and I consider it a privilege to hold compassionate space for clients.

Paulina:

Romanistan. For us, romanistan is an imaginary land for the Romani people to belong to, wherever you are in the world, and it is also the name of the podcast we started on February 14, 2021, valentine's Day. So welcome to Romanistan. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies. Romanistan is our love letter to Romani culture. We interview Romani people from different backgrounds about all the amazing things they do. Sometimes we have international relations guests who are not Roma but who are doing things we think the community would love to know about. We celebrate Romani identity and outcast culture and practice good diplomatic relations with other marginalized communities.

Jezmina:

We love rebels and the outcasts of the outcasts, who are living their truth, even if it challenges tradition. We both feel very strongly that Romani culture, like all cultures, needs to continue to evolve. We consider ourselves an intersectional feminist platform and gender liberationists, and we advocate for positive change in the world and within our own community. We speak out against the hard issues the Romani community faces, such as the normalization of domestic violence, crime, sexism, arranged teen marriage, the exclusion of LGBTQIA plus Roma and the like. If we pretend that these problems don't exist, they will not change.

Jezmina:

Sometimes we are criticized for reinforcing stereotypes when we highlight issues within the community, but we don't believe these issues are inherently Romani. They are the symptoms of any culture oppressed by systemic racism and the patriarchy. We are also pro-peace and anti-colonization and, as such, believe that Romanistan is a state of mind and needn't be an actual physical state with borders. In order for us to have representation, though, we do need to be recognized as a stateless ethnic group to better fight for human rights. Our ideal Romanistan is an inclusive global of roma and related groups, unified by culture, activism and mutual love and support we're not exactly model roma and we're not trying to be, and what does that even mean?

Paulina:

embracing the rebel or outcast archetype is positive and empowering for us. Jasmina identifies as queer and non-binary, is disabled and uses they-she pronouns, is mixed and grew up assimilated. Paulina left her arranged teen marriage and was shunned by her community, and she has two daughters. She's raising to be strong feminists like her. We are both domestic violence and child abuse survivors and we have been criticized for speaking out about it. But we share because as we heal ourselves, we heal others too.

Jezmina:

We love the traditions that give us strength and solidarity, and we love honoring our roots and seeing culture grow and thrive. Romanistan Podcast is for everyone who loves and supports Roma and related groups and anyone who feels like a misfit and wants to uplift others to create a beautiful community. We feature pioneers in culture, fashion, art, literature, music, activism, cuisine and everything good. We adore the intersections of gender, sexuality, spirituality, ability and identity. We cover all topics from the difficult to the glorious. You can find Romanistan anywhere you get podcasts and at romanistanpodcastcom.

Paulina:

Okay, guys, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this little intro.

Jezmina:

And if you would like to read more of the preview, you can find it on romanasanpodcastcom. We have it posted on our blog there and you can also just go ahead and pre-order the book. If you were feeling it, we would so appreciate it. We mentioned in our last episode that pre-orders are somehow the most important part of book selling these days, so it really helps us out if you order it before it's released. But honestly, we're just grateful if you get it and read it at all. So thank you so much.

Paulina:

Thank you for listening to Romanistan Podcast.

Jezmina:

Please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen or wherever you can give us five stars. It helps us so much.

Paulina:

You can find us at romanistanpodcastcom, where we have a blog. All of our episodes merch links to our Patreon fundraiser and social media on Instagram, tiktok and Facebook at romanistanpodcast, and on Twitter at romanistanpod podcast and on Twitter at Romanistan pod.

Jezmina:

We run entirely on your support, so if you love the show, consider donating to our coffee fundraiser. That's K O dash F? I the link coffeecom backslash Romanistan. It's on our website. You can also subscribe to our Patreon for extra content and treats every month.

Paulina:

Email us at romanistanpodcast at gmailcom with listener stories, requests for advice, recipes, romani culture, language facts and anything else you want to share. Reach out if you want to advertise with us too. We offer sliding scale for Romani, sinti and related businesses, so reach out.

Jezmina:

You can find me Jez on Instagram, tiktok and Facebook under Jezmina Vontila. Also, please check out my vintage and curiosities shop Evil Eye Edit on.

Paulina:

Etsy. You can find me, paulina Rominski, on Instagram, at underscore Paulina underscore V underscore and at RomaniHolisticcom. Follow my store Romani Holistic in Corona del Mar, california, on Instagram at Romani Holistic.

Jezmina:

Romanistan is hosted by Jessica Reedy, aka Jasmina Vontula and Paulina Verminski, conceived of by Paulina Verminski, edited by Cherub, with music by Victor Pachas and artwork by Elijah Vardo.

Paulina:

Bye, bye.