Romanistan

April Wall of Namaste Magical

• Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens • Season 4 • Episode 13

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April Wall is an author and international psychic medium with twenty years of experience helping clients sort through life’s ups and downs. A proud Romany, she carries on the traditions started by the strong women in her family, especially her great-grandmother, great aunt, and granny, or as she refers to them, April’s Angels. Find her online at namastemagical.com to book a reading and keep up to date through her social media accounts by following her on Instagram and TikTok at @namastemagical. All three of her books Reading Tarot, Reading Tea Leaves, and Deciphering Angel Numbers, can be found anywhere books are sold.

Romani crushes this episode are Christine Ford of Romany Art, Lucy Doe Designs, Elijah Vardo, & Florian Tacorian.

Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.

You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, 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. 

You can get our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, online or wherever books are sold. Visit romanistanpodcast.com for events, educational resources, merch, and more.

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


Speaker 1:

Hey Ramana Sun listeners, I have a few announcements for you. It's Jasmina, by the way. As you know, we are on our book tour and you can find all of our events on RamanaSunPodcastcom, and we have announced the pinnacle of our book tour on said website the Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling Festival. This is such an exciting event. It will take place in New Orleans from December 3rd to December 8th and it is an intimate celebration of Romani arts and culture with special features of queer and trans Romani artists. We will have ephemeral shrines, a beautiful ode to Sarah E Cahilley at the Boxcar Gallery, basically works of art inspired by our patron goddess saint. We will have Bebe's Kitchen, a Romani feast, a sumptuous five-course meal with Romani tradition and cuisine woven in to the conversation. Stewarding Tradition. A literary salon with me, paulina and fellow Wiser author Lilith Dorsey, who is not Romani but is an incredible ancestral knowledge keeper who everyone should know about. Water Always Wanders is our next event, which is an immersive theater performance that is honoring Romani culture and is put on by queer and trans Romani artists. There is a Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling pop-up at Cottage Witch and Afternoon Tea in Romanistan, which is a tea leaf reading workshop at the Vampire Apothecary. We have tickets for all of these events, which do take place in different venues around New Orleans, and we also have sponsorship opportunities, and so if you are a company and you would like to be aligned with this work, you can donate in exchange for some advertising. If you are an individual and you would like to be aligned with this work and become a sponsor of the very first time we've ever done anything like this, which is so fun that you can get some presents too for your contribution. And speaking of contributions, we are still doing the book tour fundraiser because we are still trying to raise up enough money for us to cover all of our travel gas hotels when we're somewhere not near anyone, we know all these great things.

Speaker 1:

So we want to thank Lorena Varga, laura Lee French and Duncan Richards to supporting our GoFundMe. So now you have a lot of ways that you can support us. You can donate to the GoFundMe, which helps me and Paulina with our personal travel. Or you could become a sponsor to the festival, which basically helps our performers get paid and helps us run the thing and make it beautiful and polished. Or you can just donate to the podcast through our coffee, as usual coffee fundraiser. All of this is on RamanaSanPodcastcom. It's so fun. We hope to see you there. Thank you so much for listening and we love you. We love you. It's so fun. We hope to see you there. Thank you so much for listening and we love you. We love you, it's true.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Remonstant. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies.

Speaker 1:

I'm Paulina Romanistan. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies. I'm Paulina and I'm Jez. And today we're here with author and fortune teller April Wall. April also generously contributed some quotes to our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, which you can order online or in stores. You can also request it from your local library and bookstore too, which is really rad. We're in full swing with the book tour and we are funding ourselves, so you can still donate to support our travels, so we can speak in public about the book and Romani cultural context of fortune telling, offer workshops, readings and book signings, ideally together. So check out the tour schedule and go fund me on romanistanpodcastcom. We might be coming to a city near you like Portsmouth, new Hampshire, salem Mass, new York City, amityville, new York, portland, oregon and Maine, los Angeles, california and more.

Speaker 2:

April Wall is an author and international psychic medium with 20 years of experience helping clients sort their lives up and down. A proud romani, she carries on the tradition started by the strong women in her family, especially her great-grandmother, great-aunt and granny or, as she refers to them, april's angels. Find her online at namaste magicalcom to book a reading and keep up to date through her social media accounts by following her on instagram and tiktok at namaste magical. All three of her books reading, tarot, reading tea leaves and deciphering angel numbers can be found anywhere books are sold. So, april, tell us us about yourself. Where are you from, where's your family from and what's your visa, if you're familiar with it.

Speaker 3:

Sure, well, you may hear over the course of this interview just the slightest accent. I'm from South Georgia. It doesn't get more Southern than this. So this is where my family ended up settling. But I am the way we pronounce I'm Romney Chell, all of our family. My grandmother was famous for even taking the N out and we were Romley, so that's just how we've always done it. But she was 100% Romney and my family came from England, scotland.

Speaker 3:

My great grandmother came from Scotland and that side of the family it's my maternal grandmother came over in about the 1900s. They actually came over on the Carpathia, which became famous for helping to rescue the people that were survivors of the Titanic. They weren't on that voyage but they were on it a few years before that, but I thought that was so neat. I've done a lot of ancestry and tracking those things down. But they came over and a lot of families settled in like New Jersey kind of the New England area.

Speaker 3:

But my great grandmother, dilley, met my great grandfather, thomas, and they ended up kind of traveling down the eastern seaboard. He was a photographer and she was a psychic medium and I actually have her their old tax returns and she proudly put us her occupation psychic medium. So for all those years ago like I find myself nervous to do that, you know today and she was very proud about it, but he would photograph. They had many connections in the circus and with Fair Folk. Because my great grandmother's mother is connected to the Codonas, which is a family famous in Scotland for being performers, and I also think that family branched off and were in Italy and Spain. I know that I have more in my background than just on the.

Speaker 3:

Romney-Chill side. I believe we have some Sinti and all but trying to. I think we're all probably, you know, related when you go far enough back, because we all traveled the same paths. But they ended up settling down here in the South and had my grandmother and great uncle and my granny lived with us all of my life. She kind of as soon as I was born she moved in with my mom. My mom really didn't have a choice about it and she was going to come in and help and so she didn't continue the fortune telling because she had married my grandfather who was a Godger. And a lot down here in the South is really there was a lot of repression due to, like, christian fundamentalism, and so a lot of the role I play, even in my own family, is healing a lot of the generational stuff with our heritage and just inner family dynamics and being proud of who we are Because there was so much fear dynamics and being proud of who we are because there was so much fear. And I kind of said this and I caught your podcast from a week ago giving the intro to the book and the first chapter. I am very honored that you guys included me. I'm excited for you. I think it's going to be great.

Speaker 3:

But that was one of the quotes that I gave is I graduated high school in 1999. And even then I was thinking, you know, it's the new millennium, and my granny was at home saying, don't, don't tell people, we're gypsy, don't say that. And I just thought she was very old school and didn't know that the world had changed. And I faced I faced a lot of discrimination even in my time. She kind of hid and turned away from some of the old ways in as far as doing it, you know, as a way to make a living.

Speaker 3:

However, her sister-in-law, my great aunt, who lived just a couple of towns away and I spent many weekends and summers with that, was her profession. So I really learned at her knee a lot how to interact with people and just how to deal with clients, because she did it out of her home. So my granny, although she didn't do a lot of the fortune telling there was, there were still those ways, and just how she raised me that I would learn, you know, and how we would clean, and how she didn't think I needed to be calling boys and they didn't need to call me. And you know she, she was raised where if she had looked out the window, that was a big no-no. You know why are you doing that? So I had, I would have my cousins have to do like a granny interpretation for me, because I would go over there and go.

Speaker 3:

I don't know what is she talking about, you know again it's the 90s, like we're so evolved, and they were like you don't understand. You know, culturally, how she was raised, so it was interesting. It was an interesting dynamic. But to be, to have this ethnicity and to be in the deep south, it's been a very interesting road.

Speaker 2:

I love that we get to meet people like you that have these similar experiences, because people don't get it or understand Like I could totally see that, like looking out the window and be like why are you looking out the window? Do you want to like what are you?

Speaker 1:

what are you?

Speaker 2:

like.

Speaker 3:

I cannot tell you how many times my granny asked me where I, where was I going in those hot pants? It was like they were a pair of shorts in the south too.

Speaker 1:

My dad, uh, grew up in north carolina, but he lived in georgia for a little while yeah, thank you for sharing that history too. It's so, so great that you know so many of those connections and stories really fascinating. Um, we also love to always ask, because we think of this podcast as a place for people who don't maybe always do what's expected, or traditional little rebels here and there. Do you consider yourself a rebel?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely. I think just the background that I have in living here in the South, I was almost a rebel by default here in the South. I was almost a rebel by default. I would go to school and I would, although my granny, you know, warned me and asked me not to say it. Of course I rebelled against her and I would tell people and I was met with so many times just, they didn't even know we existed. You know we were these Hollywood, you know figments and oh, that's, they're people in scary movies or whatever. So, just trying to educate people in some small way, just explain to my friends no, we are real and this is what it is, and dispel whatever myths they had.

Speaker 3:

And here in where I actually we came back, we've moved around a lot my family, me and my husband and our two kids but ultimately ended up back here for my kids to go to the same high school I did, but things that I did when I was here they actually benefited from when they came back to graduate and things had changed, I kind of rebelled in a way through the school system. I was in student government and it was like a real footloose situation. Our administration were not only our principals and things, but on the weekends they were also pastors and we legitimately couldn't have school dances. And so you know, the student body I represented them and would go to the principal and you know, fought for those things and what seems simple, you know, I'm like, and we had this whole like meeting of the minds or whatever, and I just remember he said I've only danced once and that was with my wife at my wedding, and I was like, well, respectfully, you don't have to dance.

Speaker 3:

You know it's for the students We'd rather you don't. And eventually, I mean, we were allowed to do those things. So and then to add, on top of that, I was at this point now by middle school and teenage years, reading tarot and questioning. My favorite word is why, and so many people down here just simply accept the religion of their parents and the values and things, and I just didn't. I just have never been that way. And so my high school book by Neil Donald Walsh called Conversations with God had come out and I think he's done several of those, and I just would simply tell my friends I was reading it and just the act of questioning Christian ideals or doctrines I was by the time I was a senior, I had been labeled a false prophet and I'm like you guys are giving me too much credit.

Speaker 1:

That's dramatic yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I was like take it easy, so yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2:

That's how you know you're doing something right, though yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I was poking the bear a lot, so I yeah, I would definitely say that, yeah, I was a rebel, in a sense of just just going against the status quo.

Speaker 1:

Good for you, like I I'll. Everything you said just made me love you. I'll accept that.

Speaker 2:

I'll accept that. So what did fortune telling look like in your family? You know what were the expectations, Kind of. How did you learn? I'm really interested in this because we absolutely love you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah Well, like I said, my granny had kind of shown some of those things, but yet she would make little comments, um that, well, you know, april, you, you have the craft. And then I'd say, well, what is that? And then she would go back where, oh, I don't remember saying that I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 3:

So it was like she had recognized something in me, but where she felt so, I mean, she just had so many personal issues with doing it herself, she, she wouldn't let herself tell me more than that. I would go to my great aunts, though, who they her, the entire family there had not really married outside, so they are still like 100% Romani and, um, I loved it over there. The men would get together at night, you know, and they'd have a fire out in the yard, because all of their homes they had like these mobile homes on one piece of property, and so they would play music and we would dance and everybody was telling stories. And my aunt used her home as her base of doing readings, so she was on call 24 seven. She had one of those old-timey princess phones that you know and like the rotary dial, and so if she wasn't on the phone, someone was there at the house, and so she had her master bedroom towards the back of the house and the walls were kind of thin. So when I was really young I would just first listen at the door. She had her master bathroom kind of adjoined, and so I'd also I just need to go to the restroom and so I would hear her.

Speaker 3:

The way she kind of had to practice again. It was so informed by being in the Bible belt so many times. Her stuff almost was like kind of hoodoo-esque because she would use Bible verses to encourage people, or you know, when they're going, is that guy coming back, or you know, is this probably going to be something she said I told you read, you know whatever passage, do that three times. So she kind of adapted to our surroundings, which I think that's what we're great at. But when the door would open and somebody would leave or something, I'd catch that she had a little table set up and there was a crystal ball and I kind of the way my family did it is I think they kind of waited to see who had the spark almost and who was going to take up the mantle and where the line had kind of been broken on my you know, my grandmother's side.

Speaker 3:

My mom didn't do it because of the way that my granny raised her, but I came out of the womb Like I just think the coolest thing about me is that I'm a gypsy. I just so I was like of course I'm going to tell everybody. That was the first thing I told my now husband, I'm like get into it or get out, and I literally have lamented.

Speaker 3:

I'm like you know, if I come back another lifetime or whatever and I'm not, I just don't it won't be as cool. I just think we have one of the most unique stories of humans on earth currently. I just we just have been everywhere and been a part of so much, so I mean that's it probably sounds crazy but it is true. And so my granny could see things, she knew things, she knew me from birth, she knew things I picked up on, she knew I had a knowing about things. And then my aunt kind of taught me more of the actual practical stuff. But I picked up the tools and I would like practice tea leaf readings with, like my cousins or my two younger brothers and you know they may come and look over my shoulder and go- yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

It sounds like you know. You know what you're saying, and so it was kind of just seeing how much initiative I would take, you know. So that's what I think I learned, like I use different tools and could pick up stuff that they weren't even doing, but I knew kind of I had the framework from them because I think I mean my, I use their cognizance so much. I just know things and sometimes I think it's helpful for our clients to use the tarot cards or tea leaves or there's a visual for them to see. But I believe you know anybody who psychically gifted it's coming from you. You know you're the vessel and that's. I think my aunt would say that she just used what she knew would be most comfortable to the people coming to see her in South.

Speaker 2:

Georgia, so she was adaptable. I was wondering if you can share with us some essential spiritual practices you use to protect your energy, when reading for clients or maybe when you just feel like you need a little extra something.

Speaker 3:

Sure, well, again, you'll see. I mean, throughout this interview, my great aunt was a great influence to me. She passed away in 2019, but I think she actually has been with me a lot since then. So she just stepped into the next room, as I say, but she used dragon's blood incense and that reminds me of her when you go into her home. It was always and I found the brand that still smells like that. So I use that to cleanse myself and my cards, any tools I'm using before any reading In my house.

Speaker 3:

I rely on crystals heavily. I have tourmaline at every entrance just for protection, you know, and the type of people that come in my home I want to know have good intention. Also, I have an office where I work, so that much energy that you kind of go through all the time builds up. So I use amethyst a lot and then, of course, I will meditate or ground as an earth sign. That's just good for me to connect kind of to nature, to rebalance myself, and I'll go through the house when I can tell energy is kind of built up and do some type of smoke cleanse or simply just kind of speaking over the energies in the home and kind of reclaiming my energy and kind of dominion over my space.

Speaker 1:

That's so important too, because I think, especially if you're doing readings one after another, it's that I feel like my own boundaries get really thin.

Speaker 1:

And then I start dreaming about my clients where I'm doing like nonsense readings for hygiene, and I always love to know what people do to keep themselves feeling spiritually blessed and protected. Speaking of your expertise, you've already written three excellent books that we really loved reading tarot, reading tea leaves and deciphering angel numbers so congratulations, you're prolific. Could you share a little bit about your journey as an author with three these three books?

Speaker 3:

sure, um, I had started writing probably in the mid-2000s. My husband is an attorney. He went to law school. We were already married and had two small kids and we said, hey, what's one more thing, let's's do law school. And so we went to Florida and when we were down there, the Twilight books they were already out.

Speaker 3:

But the movies had started and I heard Stephanie Meyer's story about how she was inspired by a dream and I had never really let myself think that I could be creative in that way and something about that inspired me. So I started writing it at the time because my kids were small. I wrote like I was focusing on children's fiction. But what I discovered? I ended up publishing self-publishing one called In the Midst of Monsters. But even the themes in those books still were about our people, because In the Midst of Monsters was a take on that monsters really aren't these scary things that you need to be afraid of, that they were really guardians and also that they were kind of hiding in plain sight, that they were really animals that would kind of morph into these things, and I thought about that because, especially in America and in my experience as someone who was assimilated, mixed, you know, unless I open my mouth and proclaim my heritage, no one knows.

Speaker 3:

So I know there's a privilege inherent in that, and there are many times where I've had people, because they've talked about TV shows they've seen, and they can be talking about gypsies in the room with me, and unless I open my mouth, you know, they don't know that.

Speaker 3:

So I found, even when I was trying to write fiction, it would still come back to this. So I had done that for a while, though, and tried to traditionally get published, had a literary agent, did those things and kind of put it to bed, went back to focusing just on this, and then the pandemic happened and I kind of hopped on TikTok, like so many other people did, and just I did. You know tarot readings, and I've done a crystal ball reading video, which still gets hits every day, and tea leaf reading video, and I think from that single video I had an editor reach out to me through email, and, of course, when that first came through, though, I was like, okay, this is fake you know this is because you get that email that says, hey, would you love to write a book.

Speaker 3:

I'm like sure, right, okay. And once we got through that, though and we actually had a phone call and I knew it was legit. I was like, okay, wow. So I will say for anyone listening if you feel fearful, if you feel like you want to teach or just express part of yourself on social media, please, do it because you never know where it will lead.

Speaker 3:

And I also give credit, though, to my ancestors, to my great aunt, who crossed in 2019, because that's when these books came through, and she was always she was one of my biggest cheerleaders and I know that as soon as she got to the other side, she was like, okay, we got to get this baby a book deal. Like I know. I just, I knew, I just have such gratitude because I know she pulled strings, but it, the editor, was from Weldon Owen, which is an imprint of Inside Editions, and any tarot cards that you may use that have like a connection to a movie like the Ghostbusters one or Stranger Things, anything like that. That's inside editions, so I they're in print.

Speaker 3:

Wilden Owen wanted to kind of move into the mind, body, spirit, space, and he wanted to start a series called Daily Divination. So what started as just the one book ended up being the three books. I just feel incredibly lucky. It's surreal, as I'm sure you guys kind of feel that, and and I just I'm very proud of it, but it's, it's, it's, it's odd, it's exciting, but it just feels odd and that's why, when your book came along and just to play some small part of that, that really excites me though too because it is putting us kind of in the space that we should be in within, you know, the fortune telling community.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, we both really appreciate how much you're all about, you know, community and collaboration, not competition, like we were just like so happy that your books existed and so happy you wanted to, you know, contribute to ours and, um, I also love the sound of your children's book. I didn't realize that you wrote that and I'm obsessed with monsters and I know paulina is also a fan, so that's really cool. Where can people find your children's book?

Speaker 3:

um, I it was on amazon. I've kind of pulled it down, but that may be something I can, you know, make available again yeah I have another one that was shelved that was titled ghost besties and so, yeah, it was like for middle school girls, but they had like a ghost hunting club and I really like that one so I'm like you know what I might, I might pull it down, dust it off.

Speaker 2:

See where that would go to.

Speaker 3:

I like that too. Yeah, that's, I mean ghosts and spirits. That's just part of my life. So I was a weird kid telling those stories in the playground so were we.

Speaker 1:

we also just so appreciated how, in the intro to each book you know reading tarot, reading tea leaves, deciphering angel numbers you take a moment to quickly but very clearly address your own romani cultural context and how these divination practices are part of fortune telling as a survival trade, and you explain that non-roma don't need to appropriate the word gypsy, and you also make little notes here and there, like sharing, that many roma families keep their tea leaf reading cups separate from their everyday cups and it just felt like such a great way to like sneak in some activism. It's like they don't even know they're buying a book. You snuck it in there and it just felt very organic and it was done just, just right and it made us feel really at home, also in your books, and so we would love your thoughts about your relationship between Romani representation and fortune telling for you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah Well, like I said, I almost felt like these books came to me, you know, from my ancestors. So I felt this responsibility and it's something since I was a kid, whether I knew it or not, I've kind of been leading to this kind of eventuality, if you will, where yeah, I would tell friends what you know, who the Roma were.

Speaker 3:

And then, as I started to have a family and raise them and I I urged them to you know, be open and honest and know this part of their culture. I just and watching movies and things and stuff and the reality TV shows quote unquote, like my Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding and things and the questions people are asking, ma'am, like the Jersey Shore does not represent Italian-Americans, and just put that in the same category. For Romney people, I mean it's like let's get for real. For Romany people I mean it's like let's get for real.

Speaker 3:

But so I just felt this enormous responsibility when I thought I don't know if I'll have, because at the time I only thought it was one book, and I said if this is it, if this is the only opportunity I have, then I want to make sure that this message gets out and that people know where we rank in these practices because they are so popular now and I don't believe you know personally tarot or tea leaf reading any of these practices to me aren't closed practice, but there does need to be appreciation and not appropriation and knowing where it comes from and knowing the role we've played in it. And so that was probably the, if not the first, conversation I had with my editor when I knew it was for real was like hey, you don't you got a two for one bud because, yeah, I do this stuff, but I'm also an actual.

Speaker 3:

you know, I'm an ethnic Romany, I'm somebody who you know this it was. It was a way for us to live. That's how we got by and in my particular family it was what the women in the family did for a living, and we provided. The men were marketers. They go out and let you know what the women were doing, but we brought the money in. So it was more. It's just so ingrained in who we are. So I just thought, if this is it, if this is the only little platform moment I get, I just want to make my little mark in the world to say, hey, guess all this stuff you love.

Speaker 3:

Guess who? Guess who had a big part to play in that.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, it's so important. That's the dream. Sneakily educate people, ask them to recenter Romani voices.

Speaker 3:

Yeah and that. Yeah, that was kind of a way that I especially when you get into symbols and things in the in the tea leaf reading book was just like. Oh, by the way, and I think that is a good way and a nice way to educate people. It wasn't beating anybody over the head with it. It was just like you know, and maybe they'll associate that you know on the off chance, when they see that again.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, that's right so yeah no, we thought it was really effective thank you.

Speaker 2:

Um, I do want to say that the like things I feel, I feel like, okay, I could totally relate. We were just like that, like the women would go and make the money and then the men would like sometimes like pass out cards or like they were concerned, yeah, they had flyers?

Speaker 2:

yeah, they were concerned about what we were doing and I wasn't really too familiar. My mom was, um, really into angel numbers, but the rest of my family wasn't really too familiar with it. Um, did you grow up with the concept of angel numbers or is this something that you incorporated into your work later and maybe you can explain to our listeners just a little bit of like what, um, angel numbers are?

Speaker 3:

sure, yeah, um, just to give a definition. First off, I believe personally that we all come into this world and we have kind of a team of spirit helpers. Some people will label that as guardian angels, spirit guides, your ancestors, you know even God, or spirit themselves. So either way, I think we have people who are on the journey with us and want us to succeed, want us to meet our goals, and so they're constantly trying to communicate with us. And I just think numbers are this great universal way to get our attention. And with angel numbers, you know, and it's become very popular, but it's normally something that's repetitive or sequenced or patterned in some way. So it does catch your eye.

Speaker 3:

Growing up down here and I can't say it's so much informed necessarily by the Romney culture, but in the Deep South there's a lot of weight given to dreams about numbers and what that number meant when you dreamt about it. Or if you dreamt of a number you get up the next day, you go play the lotto with that. And then in my own house my stepfather was a race car driver and that bunch is pretty superstitious and his favorite number was 201. That was the car he drove and that almost became like this lucky omen or talisman. Anytime, if we had a hotel and we have room 201 or anything like that, we'd go okay, you know that's going to be good luck. So we kind of did it like that and then, even as I got older and like high school, before the cell phone.

Speaker 3:

That's how old I am. Um, there were beepers, and I didn't have one because I wasn't that cool, but my best friend did, and so we started. There was a lot of shorthand through numbers. We would frequently I would write her like 304, which was ho, and that was sent in love. That's what we called each other. Sadly, she passed away when she was only 19. And since that time though, if I'm speaking about her, if I've dreamt of her and my eye just rips and I see the time, it'll be 304, just always.

Speaker 3:

So I just personally and like where I grew up, numbers have always. There's always been little messages behind them. So I sat with spirit and really I wanted to make sure I touched on universal definitions that people have for 1111 and things like that, but also just the downloads that I got and kind of there was a lot of channeling happening in that book because I've written it and a lot of times I'm like I can't quite remember that. Let me go to the book. What did I say about this number? Because it just kind of came through me.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, numbers have always had a significance for me. Numerology and stuff was very my father. I've dealt with a lot of death in my life, I'm just very well acquainted with it and my father passed away when I was six and so I came across a numerology book like in middle school and to me it was way like I knew his birthday and I had so little knowledge of him because my parents had divorced when I was only three and through the numbers like I kind of had an idea of what his personality was like, maybe who he was, you know what he acted like and then what of my own personality I could attribute to him. So numbers have always they've been, they've played a very important part in my life.

Speaker 2:

I love that your explanation kind of included, like it doesn't have to be this universal 11 11. Sometimes it's just your own number that you always see or you consider like lucky, or or this or a message or whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

So I like that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And we are coming up on spooky season and when we messaged you asking if you'd want to talk about ghosts and things like that, you're like this is my language, so we're so excited and we've also heard so many different responses about the Romani relationship with Halloween and we were curious did your family celebrate Halloween? How do you feel about the holiday? Anything you want to share about that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we here, like with my family personally and the Romani side they've handled everything with so much laughter, so down here from time to year after year, like when I was growing up again the Christian fundamentalists it almost be like a thing. Like you know, some years that Halloween would be okay and then other years it was oh, this is evil, it's satanic and all these things. And my family just they've always dealt with so much just with a laugh and they're so unserious about it and I just think we've dealt with so many things. You can't take too much too seriously. So I, it's one of my favorite holidays still, I love it and my kids love it. We grew up celebrating it and just, you know, seeing it for what it was, that it's not a way for somebody to indoctrinate your kid or whatever. They just want some you know candy and to enjoy the night and get to kind of be free, you know, and and maybe role play a little bit. So yeah, we, we enjoyed it I love that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it doesn't need to be so serious and it really is so much about candy just let the kids enjoy it feel free to share your favorite spooky story, anything that happened um ghosts, supernatural happenings during readings, whatever else you want to share, we want to hear it um well, I've mentioned my granny dilly and, like you said in the bio, my granny, my great granny dilly, my great aunt and my granny are.

Speaker 3:

They're all on the other side and I know that they they look after me and I also know that they spur me on all the time. I mean, I feel an incredible amount of weight, responsibility, just to make them proud. And so my granny Dilley passed away when my mom was still a little girl, but it's really not slowed her down from being a very pivotal part of all of our lives. She would still come after she passed away. She had a habit of coming from her trailer house to my grandmother's to have morning coffee together and even after she passed away, the back door would still open at the same time. She used to come in and you would hear the cups and things and my granny was just like that was my mom. You know, like I know, that's mama, it's not a problem. And then she inherited her china and learned that if you do not arrange it in a certain way, she will show up, rearrange it for you. She was woken up a couple of times when they would move from house to house and if granny rearranged it in the china cabinet and it wasn't to granny Dilley's liking. She would wake up the next morning and it would be moved. So we just were all very aware that she is very she was very powerful woman on earth, and not much has changed.

Speaker 3:

So when we were down in Florida and my husband was in Walsall I think, we had an afternoon and we decided we were going to watch Sam Raimi's film Drag Me to Hell, and I already knew it was super problematic, and so evidently my granny Dilly did too, because she made it well known. We started watching the movie and sometimes you know you just you'll watch things. You just either want to make yourself mad or just let me just see. Let me see if it's as bad as I think it's going to be, and it was. And as the movie kept going on, the way I was sitting I was watching the TV and the front door of the house was directly to my right and so it sounded like a little rattle started at the door and I looked over at my husband and I was like, are you hearing that?

Speaker 3:

So we lived in Florida. It wasn't windy that day, we didn't have any storms or anything like that. We'd never the door had never done this before, but so we just go back to whatever Cause again. We I live with a lot of supernatural energy, so you just kind of get used to some. Some things become your norm. Well, the door became persistent and then it got to the point at some point in the movie, I think, when it was reaching its pinnacle. It was like someone was standing on the other side of the door just pulling at the knob, like you know trying to get in was being so aggressively moved, and so, being the brave soul that I am, I told my

Speaker 3:

husband to get up and look. And he got up, looked through the peephole, couldn't see anyone, and pulled the door open. No one's there, it's still outside and for some reason the house had gotten really dark and when he opened the door, though the sun, there was no clouds, and so it struck me in that moment, finally, it was like I just knew it was my granny Dilly, and she was like April, why are you watching this trash? And I just, I said out loud, I said, okay, granny, I get it, I'm going to turn the movie off. I get it, we're not going to watch it anymore. I couldn't. And it stopped, the door stopped. It had never done that before, it never did it after, until we moved.

Speaker 3:

And I just, she has a way of making herself known and I just I knew that in my bones. My husband was there, he knew it, and it was like don't you know, don't even contribute to this bad representation by giving it a view. You know, like you, you know what's wrong. You don't have to make yourself mad over it, just turn it off. So that was one of those times that, yeah, it got. I was a little unnerved, but once I realized it was her and acknowledged that it went away and and cut the movie off.

Speaker 3:

So, I've never, ever tried to watch it again that's awesome she was.

Speaker 3:

She was pretty forceful there. My mom it's not, you know my ghost story quote-unquote, but my mom when she was a teenager. So granny had already passed away, but she was in this relationship with this guy who had actually been quite abusive to her. And they were at home alone and the dryer door kept popping open and it would cause my mom to go and check. She didn't have any clothes in there, nothing was going on and she would go back and was sitting on the couch with this guy and it got to the point where outside she started to hear someone calling her name and it was my granny Dilly's voice calling to her and it got so loud outside that the guy got scared and he jumped in his car, almost left my mom trying to get out of there and uh, but it did end up breaking them up and it was only once my mom told me about it.

Speaker 3:

All those years later I said well, you know, mama, that was granny Dilly protecting you, you know cause she told me like, yeah, this guy really he'd done some really bad things to me. I said do you ever think, you know, although it was scary, she was doing what it took to like, get you out of there. So she's like yeah, I never, I never thought of it like that.

Speaker 2:

So my yeah, granny dilly, you don't you don't cross her.

Speaker 3:

She she has not been slowed down by death. She will, if she's got to get her point across she certainly will.

Speaker 2:

I love that she has to she definitely has to make herself known.

Speaker 3:

You will acknowledge her.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um, we're going to switch gears a little bit, um, and go to one of our favorite questions, and that is who are your romani crushes, or just general roma that you admire?

Speaker 3:

sure, um, well, I know it's gonna seem like I'm pandering, but you guys for sure, right off the bat, um, I'm so excited about the book. I love the podcast, like what you guys do individually and just it's just that you know, the activism that you're doing, the awareness that you're raising, that's it's really cool and I've been, I've learned for years, you know, just kind of watching what you guys were doing. I have gotten a piece of art from Christine Ford at Romany Art I believe she's New Zealand, not in Australia. She's so good, yeah, yeah, I, you know, admired a lot of her stuff and she was so kind to gift me a painting of the Empress tarot card and so that's one of my treasured possessions. Now, I just think that's so cool.

Speaker 3:

Lucy Doe Lucy Doe designs my daughter. We actually we bought several pieces from her, but we got a pair of earrings and she wore those when she graduated high school and gave a speech and it was like this way to kind of put her heritage speech and and it was like this way to kind of put her heritage, you know, out there and um, that's very special to her love, elijah bardo, I have some of his artwork is like my phone backdrop.

Speaker 3:

I mean, what's not to love? Uh, florian, uh to corian I, he, he's great, I love that. You know he's in college and yet and he's using tiktok, instagram, that platform, so well to really. I mean, I really think he has brought attention to some things people wouldn't otherwise know. So I'm just excited for in my lifetime, it's my birthday on Thursday. I'm about to be 44 years old and shameless birthday plug, but happy birthday.

Speaker 2:

Happy birthday Just from. Thank you Just from my.

Speaker 3:

In my lifetime though, and shameless birthday plug, but happy birthday Just from, thank you, just from my in my lifetime, like I said, graduating being, I guess I'm considered an elder millennial? I certainly don't. I don't claim Gen X.

Speaker 1:

I'm an elder millennial as well, over here.

Speaker 3:

And so I watched it change so much from where when I was a kid and to say, yeah, you know I'm Romany, or and you know me as a gypsy or whatever, and I'm not to even know to now where I my kids. I have one child still in college and so impressed when she says something and people know, or if she uses something she's actually had people correct her and she's like, no, actually I am, so it's like, um, I'm not just a kid who read about it, so it's just I. I love that part of where we're so connected globally and people are getting educated now in new ways and just, yeah, all those people that I mentioned, I think are just doing such great work. It's so, so exciting and I'm just fans and I just, like I said earlier, I just think we're the coolest people and you know, the more people who know about it.

Speaker 1:

I just I think it's it's so neat thank you so much for the love and for sharing the love. We love all your crushes too, and thank you for including us. That's really really sweet. It's so fun because we get so excited to interview everyone. We ask to be on the show and we're like, oh, we love them, maybe they'll be on the show and then you also really like what we do.

Speaker 3:

It's like, yes, we want to cry. Maybe they'll ask for me to be on the show.

Speaker 1:

We just start crying. So our final question what do you have coming up on the horizon that you might want to share, that people can look forward to, and how can people find you to work with you, book with you and support your work in general?

Speaker 3:

Sure, I'm hoping to start making some changes, and they may not take effect until the beginning of next year. I'm kind of in a period of transition myself where I do have two adult kids now. So I'm semi an empty nester and my husband and I are looking to move. So our house is for sale.

Speaker 3:

So I haven't been open to readings in the last few months just because I want to give 100 percent when I read for clients, and so I should be opening that back up soon and I'm looking to maybe try to build some classes and things around the books that I've published. I think if someone goes out and gets it and they're like this is great, but now kind of how do I use it? If I could kind of facilitate that? So, really, to keep up with me on Instagram or TikTok, across any Facebook, any of it, I'm at Namaste Magical and my website is namastemagicalcom. You can book a reading with me there as well, as you can see all the information about my books. They're pretty much available anywhere books are sold.

Speaker 3:

So that's me. I post content on Instagram every day. I'm hoping to get a little more regular with TikTok again, these algorithms are just fun to play with. So I'm hoping to get a little more consistent and maybe doing lives and things like that more so I can interact with people. But that's where I'm at for the time being and you're just being open to whatever the universe wants to bring to me.

Speaker 1:

We love that Going with the flow can bring up a lot of interesting opportunities sometimes well, thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Go ahead, paulina I was gonna say that thank you for coming on the show. Um, I really enjoyed hearing your stories, I really enjoyed hearing your journey, um, and if I'm in Georgia, I'm definitely going to stop by, because I could totally talk to you for hours.

Speaker 1:

Like.

Speaker 2:

I love all the. I love all that stuff.

Speaker 3:

I am down here so where, where?

Speaker 1:

in? Oh yeah, you said you were moving, though.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, I'm in South Georgia, I'm like on the Florida Georgia line and where we're looking to relocate, though it's just north georgia kind of outside of the atlanta area, so okay I need a little more stimulation, and this I I think I've done my time down here. I'm like universe. I raised my kids. I let me go.

Speaker 2:

Congratulations on that too yes, that's awesome.

Speaker 1:

I I lived in tallahassee for a while and I've been to thomasville, georgia yeah, yeah, that place I'm right up the road from there.

Speaker 1:

Oh cool, yeah, oh well, wonderful. We wish you all the all the best luck with your move and thank you for being here. This was a delight. And yeah, everyone, check out all of the books that we talked about. You can have a whole library of Romani fortune telling books by Roma, which is delightful, a novel idea. Yes, and if you happen to know any bookstores or like occult bookstores, definitely suggest that they stock Romani written books, because wouldn't this be cool if this just became the next big thing where people care about Romani written books? Because wouldn't this be cool if this just became the next big thing where people care about Romani people All right y'all.

Speaker 1:

Thank you and goodbye. Thank you for listening to Romanistan Podcast you can find us on Instagram, tiktok and Facebook at Romanistan Podcast and on Twitter at RomanistanPod, to support us, join our Patreon for extra content or just donate to our Ko-Fi fundraiseriser, ko-ficom backslash romanistan, and please rate, review and subscribe. It helps people find our show.

Speaker 2:

it helps us so much you can follow Jez on instagram at jasminavantila and paulina at romani. You can get our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling online or wherever books are sold. Visit romanistanpodcastcom for events, educational resources and more. Email us at romanistanpodcast at gmailcom for inquiries.

Speaker 1:

Romanistan is hosted by Jasmina Von Tila and Paulina Stevens, conceived of by Paulina Stevens, edited by Victor Pachas, with music by Victor Pachas and artwork by Elijah Vardo.