Romanistan

Angeliska Polacheck: Sister Temperance Tarot

• Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens • Season 4 • Episode 14

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Angeliska Polacheck (they/she) is an Austin, Texas based writer, healer, and professional tarot reader. Devoted to helping seekers find their path, they utilize the tarot in a compassionate and trauma-informed combination of visionary mystic counseling and energy work. Angeliska has been working with the tarot for over 30 years now, and has been reading for clients professionally since 1999. Their dedication and genuine passion for creating joyful and intriguing connections has led to acclaim and recognition from the Chronicle's Best of Austin Awards as Austin's Best Tarot Reader/Psychic for the past ten years running.

Their writing has been published in NILVX I(II): A Book of Magic, The Folk Horror Revival: Corpse Roads, Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology, Coilhouse Magazine, Tank Magazine, and Astrology.com.

You can read their personal writing at: www.angeliska.com and learn more about their tarot divination services and healing work at Sister Temperance Tarot: www.sistertemperance.com

Follow at @angeliska and @sistertemperancetarot

Romani crushes this episode are Jennileen Joseph @sastimosholistichealth, Katelan Foisy @katelanfoisy

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. Please support our book tour fundraiser if you can. 

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:

Welcome to Romanistan, where your friendly neighborhood jitsies. I'm.

Speaker 2:

Paulina and I'm Jez, and today we are talking more fortune telling in celebration of our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, which is out in stores, and, as you might know, we are planning a book tour all through the month of October and a festival in New Orleans in December and a few little dates in November. And in order to make those events a reality, especially ones where you know Paulina and I can be together, we really need your help. You know Paulina and I can be together. We really need your help.

Speaker 2:

If you donate to our book tour, GoFundMe, which is linked on our website and in our social media, we will give you presents like tarot readings, signed book plates, which are just stickers that we have signed, and then you stick them in whatever book you want signed paperback copies and shout outs on the podcast, all kinds of things.

Speaker 2:

So right now, there are three ways for people to get a signed copy from us. You can donate to our GoFundMe for a book plate or a hard copy. You can appear at an event that we are doing for the book tour and ask us to sign it, or secret third way, where maybe you meet us on the street and you happen to have a book on you, and so if we have other ways to do this in the future, we'll let you know. But as we are promoting and trying to raise funds so we can go places and actually do the book tour, this is how we're doing it. Thank you so much for donating. We really, really appreciate you, and we will continue to read out the folks who give us $20 or more on Ramana Sam Podcast as our little shout-out. Thank you, but now on with the interview.

Speaker 1:

Angeliska Polocek they. She is an Austin, texas-based writer, healer and professional tarot reader Devoted to helping seekers find their path. They utilize tarot in a compassionate and trauma-informed combination of visionary mystic counseling and energy work. Of visionary mystic counseling and energy work, angeliska has been working with the tarot for over 30 years now and has been reading for clients professionally since 1999. Their dedication and genuine passion for creating joyful and intriguing connections has led to acclaim and recognition from the Chronicles Best of Austin Awards as Austin's best tarot reader, slash psychic. For the past 10 years running. Their writing has been published in Nilex, a Book of Magic, the Folklore Revival, corpse Roads, arcana, the Tarot Poetry Anthology, collie House Magazine, tank Magazine magazine, tank magazine and astrologycom. You can read their personal writing at angeliscacom and learn more about their tarot divination services and healing work at sister temperance tarot wwwsistertemperancecom. And I love how you got that angeliscacom. Oh my God, what a cool website name.

Speaker 2:

Perfect, that's a score.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for sure it was. It was before I got a long time ago before hopefully there were ever any other angelisca's to like claim my territory.

Speaker 1:

I can be the only one like claim my territory.

Speaker 2:

I can be the only one. Yeah, we didn't ask this, but now I want to ask it is the temperance card your favorite? Like?

Speaker 3:

why? Why sister temperance? Yeah, it is my favorite. So the my business name actually was inspired by the band Rasputina. Are you guys familiar with them? I love them a lot. They just, you know, have been close to my heart for a long time and when I was writing for Coilhouse they invited me to do an interview with them, which was like dream come true and their album had just come out with a song, sweet Sister Temperance.

Speaker 3:

And I was like, oh, I like that, of course, the temperance card, and I didn't really want to use like my name for my business and I love the practice, just, you know, in fortune telling and sometimes in conjure tradition, of like, using like sister or mother or know some kind of like you know, um, that kind of affiliation, um, before a name. And so sister temperance just really felt like what I wanted to convey in terms of like that relational, um, sister to me just has a feeling, even though it is gendered and I do identify as non-binary like, still, that sister feels more equal rather than like hierarchical, of like I'm up here and I'm telling you you know how to live your life. It's more like let me, let me support you, let me help you, and temperance. I don't know if we have time for me to get into temperance on the podcast because I have a lot to say about that card, but let's just say that my relationship to it and how I engage with it is very different from how I've seen any other reader or teacher of tarot relate to the card. And so when I you know any tarot book that I've ever read over the years, which is like many, many, many, of course, I'll immediately flip to the chapter about temperance and just see, like, what do they say?

Speaker 3:

And I'm like, okay, and no, you know, no shame on anyone else's interpretation, but I always feel like there's something a little bit missing here. When people are like, yeah, it's balance, it's harmony, it's everything, everything in moderation, it's something about your guardian angel, I don't know like I feel like it's a card that gets kind of glossed over and I I don't know if I've ever seen anyone like really get into what I think it is about. Um, I'm not a huge crowley fan or you know, toftech is great, but one of the things that, um, I feel like it really got right was renaming temperance art, and I can go a deeper into it if you want, but that's really what the card is about. It's about art and alchemy and healing.

Speaker 2:

Interesting. Yeah, I was going to ask you for a few key words for what your interpretation is. So art, alchemy and healing, that's it Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

And yeah, actually it's so funny because I was on the phone with my dad last night and actually gave him my entire rundown of temperance, which we just had never talked about, and I'm grateful to have a father that is here for those conversations, for sure.

Speaker 2:

That's really sweet. Speaking of family, tell us about yourself. Where are you from, where are your folks from? What's your visa? Anything you want to share about your background? Yeah?

Speaker 3:

So I am from Austin, texas, born and raised. I lived in New Orleans for seven years, so that is also like a heart home for me before Hurricane Katrina blew my roof off and blew me back to Austin. Most of my family's here, so lucky to have them. My mom's side, that is where my Romani child heritage comes from and, yeah, as far as we know, they were some of the Rwandan child that were pushed out of England, you know, from the 1700s to 1800s, were continually being, yeah, banished, exported, often as endangered service servants or worse, to the to this country, and suffered a lot of assimilation. And, um, yeah, as far as we can tell, we were probably lovels whose name had to be changed to kind of blend in, because that's, you know, a very famous, uh, romani child name, romani name. So, yeah, we became loves and, yeah, blended in that way and so lost a lot of tradition, lost a lot of language, but carried that knowledge and it's really, yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 3:

I'm not really close with a lot of my country family. I love them, but a lot of them are like, pretty religious, pretty conservative. I'm not surprised to go back there. At one point for my I was officiating my uncle's memorial and just talking with them and like discovering that a lot of them are really proud of that part of our family and like really own it and like lead with it and it just like warmed my heart a lot to see, like I don't know, I think a lot of you know centuries of hiding and assimilation. There's like a healing that's happening and people like taking some pride in who we are and seeing that just really prevalent in parts of my family that, yeah, we're not as connected as we could be.

Speaker 3:

On my dad's side we are, yeah, straight up Eastern European Jewish, polish, czechoslovakian, lithuanian, bohemian, moravian. Did I say Lithuanian, russian, like all that. We're all that over there and pretty much just that. And then also on my mom's side is like a mix of Irish, scottish, celtic, you know, western European, french, some Iberian, spanish, all that. So, yeah, a much mixture.

Speaker 2:

That's so nice to hear that when you visited family they were, they had a lot of pride for their roots. It's very, it's very much a mixed bag. On my mom's side of the family, I feel like a lot of the women in my family were really proud of it and a lot of the men were like, can we please stop talking about this? But it's nice to be, you know, proud of being Roma, because when we weren't encouraged to be, that means we extra should be.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I feel that really really strongly and yeah, it means it does mean a lot to have that connection.

Speaker 3:

I feel, you know, especially in in my family, there are just very deep wounds around assimilation and around erasure and around disconnection from roots.

Speaker 3:

And, yeah, I just want to be sensitive to, like you know, claiming something, an identity that is so distant, and also, when we don't, when we don't aim it sorry, when we don't claim it, when we don't own it, it contributes to that erasure, it contributes to that eradication and it's just something that has been very successful, you know, like the eradication and the erasure and the loss of culture, unfortunately, has been very successful all over the world through centuries of Roma culture and roots and pride. And so, yeah, like there are times where, yeah, I think it can be tempting for people to kind of bury it or say like, oh, like I don't know if I, you know, have a right to, you know, say where I come from, you know, but I don't personally want to contribute to that erasure. So thank you for, yeah, like welcoming me in it. Um, even though it's it's like a little bit, a little bit different than, I think, some people's experience.

Speaker 1:

I find it's interesting that we're having this conversation. I was literally just having this conversation in the car and it was like my man was asking me like how much gypsy do you feel? Because, like, I couldn't remember the name of the word for dance and I'm like how the hell do we say dance? And I was, it just ended up turning into this conversation. I think that we also touched on when we were talking to. Who were we talking to yesterday?

Speaker 1:

Jess, april Wall, april Wall yeah, so we were talking to April Wall about this and like how this erasure is kind of like normalized. It's almost like I feel like. So, anyway, the question question was like how American do you feel and gypsy do you feel? And I was like way more American, like I'm totally American, I'm like living an American life, like you know, we're sitting, we're sitting here having this conversation, like you know, with a non-Romanian person, and so I feel that way. But then another part of me was like what am I even thinking? Like I'm 100% gypsy, like it's you know, it's in my, it's how you're raised, it's how you're born, and so, yeah, thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 3:

Do you consider yourself a rebel? Oh, I was kind of excited about this question. Oh, you know, it's funny like um, I think my neurodivergence has a little bit of a play in this, because if you looked at my pictures from when I was a teenager, like you would be like oh yes, clearly you were rebelling. But if you kind of asked me what I was doing, I was like no, I'm just being myself and I'm just doing what I want to do and I'm not like you know I was. I was doing what made sense to me.

Speaker 3:

And I think that sometimes there's this idea that rebellion is like for show or it's just to be inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory. Be the ties that bind the things that want to, you know, flatten all of our essences, our personality, what makes us unique. Then it's just like very logical to be rebellious is my sense of it. But yeah, like it was always about me wanting to express myself and I had very like kind of permissive hippie parents so there wasn't a lot that I could do that they would, you know, be very restrictive about. So there wasn't a lot of like rebelling for the sake of rebelling.

Speaker 3:

It was more like I just I want to do this and it's what feels right for me, and I think, now that I'm not a teenager very far from it, alas and like becoming more of like, yeah, getting into my crony crony elder witch years, queer elder years, crony elder witch years, queer elder years um, I think, like some of the ways that it, that that rebel comes out, is just sort of like pushing even myself, like challenging myself to think differently, to like challenge my own ideas about things that I've held and which can be, um, painful and difficult, um, but I think it's really like kind of, maybe the highest form of rebellion is like challenging your own ideas about the world. I don't know if that answers the question.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Yeah, I think it's important that we challenge our own ideas about the world a lot. I think it's important that we challenge our own ideas about the world a lot. We would also love to know about your path to fortune, telling how did you get to where you are today?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so my mom died when I was seven years old. She died of cancer. So that's another, like you know, a little bit of a disconnect. I'm really close to my aunt. She was like a mother to me, but there's just a lot I can't. I can't ask my mom.

Speaker 3:

You know she was an artist, she was definitely a mystic in her way and she had a tarot deck that when I was 11, my father decided I was ready to receive her cards and so you know, it means something different for me receiving it from this like ancestral lineage and receiving it in this way not to denigrate anybody who, you know, buys their deck at a store or however they get it, but it it definitely felt deeply significant and at the time I don't think I knew how much it would shape my life and my path. But when I look back now it's so powerful to me that, like I received this from my father and and that he was so supportive that he you know so many people are told by their parents like don't mess with that or don't look at that or, you know, are really sheltered from it. Seeker, who not only gave me the cards, but gave me books to read and also showed me the I Ching and was like, hey, go like, have fun and learn what you want. And I was very precocious, studious, um, yeah, like quiet, weird little child who would you know, go to the library and go to the, like you know, spirituality section and come home with like a giant stack of books and I was just reading every single thing that I could and so read and researched, I read for myself and read for my friends and read for family.

Speaker 3:

And then by the time I was 19, I moved to New Orleans and I got a job at an occult shop in the French Quarter and I suddenly was like thrown into reading professionally for total strangers, like no book, no, you know, just like, here we are, we're going to do this, and it was a revelation for me. I loved it so much, it was so powerful and I really consider that like my apprenticeship in a way, because I was getting paid like $5 cash under the table per reading. So it wasn't like really truly getting paid, even like hardly anything, but I had got to have a lot of experience reading for all kinds of people, um, and yeah, I, I always felt called to it. But I think I had this story in my mind of, like that's not, that's not a legitimate way to make a living, that's not a real job, and I kind of ran from it for a long time.

Speaker 3:

And then, after I came back to Austin, after Katrina, I was an antique dealer for a while. I did graphic design, I'm an artist, I was pursuing journalism, doing all kinds of things, and the tarot just really kept calling to me and I'm so glad I stopped running because it is very clearly my path and it is what I do full time. I don't have another job or another source of income Like. This is my full time life's work.

Speaker 1:

That, I feel like, is a very touching journey, and sorry that you had to go through that and, at the same time, feel like, um, thank you for sharing that. That was a lot. That was really deep, so I appreciate you being open with us yes, and I don't want to.

Speaker 3:

I know we have limited time and I don't want to go too off topic, but I just want to note that, um, both my parents are musicians. I come from a really musical family as well and I love to sing and I'm, you know, I write and I'm also a silversmith, so those are also like ancestral things. My mother was a silversmith and made jewelry and honor those things, but more as like hobbies and less as like a career, career path do you have speaking of fortune telling?

Speaker 1:

no, um, do you have any fortune telling advice?

Speaker 3:

or, if you want to share us like advice that you really remember that you received, that's kind of been helpful for you students and apprentices at times, and I think that the most essential aspect is really learning to develop your relationship to your intuition and to trusting yourself. Everyone is going to have their own relationship to the cards or whatever medium you use for divination. There are so many and I think that you know sometimes if you find you don't vibe with one, it's totally legitimate to go, you know, explore another one. One of the big things that I think that I had to learn myself is that there really isn't a right or wrong way, and it's something that I have to. You know, work with my students on. We're like I heard you're not supposed to do this or you, you can't do it this way. And I'm like uh, who says I mean like very, that's the rebel in me. That's like do what feels right for you, like I don't read reversals, I just that doesn't work for me.

Speaker 2:

I don't either I don't, either I and I no shade on anyone who does but. I'm like I just don't want to, don't, I won't, I refuse.

Speaker 3:

I refuse, I refuse. It just doesn't work for me. It never has. And this is if I'm going to condense the advice into one little bite-sized morsel, it is this If you try to do it one way and you find that it really just doesn't work for you and you can't seem to make it gel or fit, stop trying that way. Try your own way. Figure out something else that does feel right. So reversals, doing like a Celtic cross spread, that kind of thing. Also, I don't use a set spread in my readings, the reading that that I use, the spread I use. Some people call it, uh, the romani spread, some people call it the golden dawn spread, I call it the sister temperance spread. But it doesn't have like a past, present, future or like set placements. It's more about the geometry and of the cards and the conversation that they're having, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

It does make sense. I sometimes use my own variation on the Celtic cross, but a lot of times I'll just pull cards intuitively and they just tell me where they're going and what the spread means, and it's just yeah, I love the like. You need to make this your own approach.

Speaker 3:

It's great. Yeah, it involves a lot of self trust, which I think is essential for intuition, and it's very personal, you know, and I think, like this kind of practice is just simply not ever going to be a one size fits all.

Speaker 2:

We wrote a whole section on Roma and intuition in the book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling out in stores. Get it if you can Do.

Speaker 3:

you feel that Roma have a special relationship to intuition yeah, I do actually, from you know, at least my experience, I think, like connection to uh, connection to the earth, connection to nature. Like you know, living outside of uh sort of mainstream society, I think, will connect you deeper to your intuition and the idea that, like you know, there are certain groups of people that have gifts or aptitudes in certain areas. I mean, you'll see, like there are Maasai people who tend to be really amazing runners and there are, you know, greek people who have, like amazing musical ability or poetic ability, and I think it's just like anything else. It's a muscle that if you, if you stretch it and if, if you work it right, you're going to develop skill, you're going to develop attitude, and if your ancestors work that muscle and developed it and pass that gift down to you, um, I I think that there is just something, there's something there that feels undeniable to me.

Speaker 3:

Um, you know, there there's also, you know, of course, so many other gifts and blessings passion. So there's musical ability, survival, you know, and these are things that when I think about, yeah, ancestral, you know, burdens, I really want to honor the blessings as well. So this was a big one. Yeah, I was listening to um y'all's last like spooky season episode and like so loving it. It was like I know I want to go like find the spooky stuff yeah listen to that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I like the spooky stuff too. That's always my favorite thing to listen to when I listen back.

Speaker 3:

I listen to spooky podcasts, like true ghost story podcast, literally all year round, so they're my favorite. They're my favorite. Do you listen to spooked have you ever? No, oh, shit, okay spooked. And radio rental is pretty good too. It's more, it's a little bit more silly, but spooked is like and other worlds.

Speaker 2:

Oh okay, I've been listening to um two girls, one ghost, a lot, which is very cute so we heard that you lived in a haunted house.

Speaker 1:

Can you tell us about kind of that, that story, maybe any other spooky stories you have?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. So, just to preface, I have seen ghosts and have had contact with the dead throughout my life and it's just something that happens to certain people. I don't think I knew until I got a little bit older that it maybe actually didn't happen to everyone being these, you know, if you know, you know. But like the gray floaty guys and the little white wispy things and the black shadow things, right, and like the cat ghosts, right, y'all know what I'm talking about. Okay, so I'd seen that kind of thing my whole life and had the dead come through in dreams and things like that. But in my many years of reading about ghosts and especially as a kid, being obsessed with stories of the paranormal and true ghost stories, I never really saw a visual apparition and I've come to understand that those are fairly rare to see. A true, maybe you would call it a specter, but New Orleans, as you might know and if well, you'll be there for your book tour soon, so I'm super excited about that it's a very haunted place, extremely, extremely haunted city, and if you're going to see an apparition anywhere, I would say New Orleans is a place where it could happen and it happened to me on at least two occasions.

Speaker 3:

One, I was driving past. We were going to a cemetery uptown and we weren't sure if it was open and so we were driving past. I can't remember the name of the cemetery. I can look it up for y'all if you want to go check it out. It is off magazine, I believe, or maybe it's St Charles. Anyway, sorry, somewhere uptown we're driving past and my friends are like I think it's too late, I think it's closed and the cemeteries in New Orleans have raised graves, they have like these raised mausoleums with like, so you can look down the kind of like the aisle of the cemetery. And I saw a little girl run across like the path and I was like, oh no, y'all, it's open, there's a kid in there.

Speaker 3:

I just saw this little girl in a white dress and I thought you know, she's probably like it's a wedding. I officiated a wedding in New Orleans or maybe it's like they're doing photos or I don't know. She seemed kind of dressed up. Now that I reflect, she was definitely wearing like a period clothing, like Victorian kind of era clothing. So we turn the corner and we go to park and then we like a period clothing, like Victorian kind of era clothing. So we turn the corner and we go to park and then we go to the gate and it is locked. It is, it is closed, it's been closed, it was never open that day.

Speaker 1:

There was no reason Perfect invitation. The locked gate.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and we did not go in, we did not trespass into the closed cemetery, but I did see very clearly a little girl running in that cemetery and I know that she was probably not a living being house and I would encounter the ghosts that lived in the stairwell on a regular basis and we were friends. They were very friendly with me, there was good, good energy, we had a good rapport and you know it was my errant youth. I was in my twenties, so I would be. I lived on the third floor and I would be like going up and down the stairs, forgetting things and high platform heels, often inebriated, and there were many times where I'm also a little uncoordinated, where I would like slip and I would feel my body like falling backwards and every single time I swear this happened I would be like about to tumble and meet my death on the stairs and a hand would always push me back up and I'd be like thank you, thanks, and that was, you know, just something that felt really amazing.

Speaker 3:

One day I was locking my bike up to the banister of that stairwell and as I'm looking down to like fiddle with my bike lock, I sent someone standing there and I thought it was my neighbor. Down to like fiddle with my bike lock, I sent someone standing there and I thought it was my neighbor and I sort of like glanced up through my peripheral vision and saw a man standing there, like looking down at me, standing very still, and you know, I don't know if you know the sensation of kind of looking, you know, out of the corner of your eye, like not I didn't turn my entire head, but I got this impression of this man in like an army green, like wool, kind of maybe 30s, 40s era, like an army uniform, and he was very sad and very solemn. He was young, he was handsome and he had like a blonde curly hair, kind of marcelled, like waved side part. It was very clear, very specific, and I was like, oh okay, like pretty quickly realized like this guy doesn't live here, he is a ghost. This is one of the presences I've been sensing and I just, you know, like just stood with, like felt him standing there and just kind of stayed with him, and then when I, you know, turned my head, he disappeared and so I just, you know, was curious about who he was. I guess it was maybe a few, I don't know the timeline.

Speaker 3:

Maybe a week or two after that, I had a friend um, it's actually the wife of a friend coming to stay with me. I had not met her before, so we had never talked, we had never met, but it was, you know, my friend had gotten married to this woman and she was coming to visit and I was like, yeah, you can stay here. And she came in kind of late at night and we were all working so we didn't really get to like. It was like hi, here's your room. Like you know, we had made her a little bed like a pallet on the floor, like you do. And, um, you know, we're like we'll, we'll see you in the morning, we'll have breakfast and we'll we'll like catch up then. So there was no time to like connect or talk.

Speaker 3:

Um, the next morning at breakfast and I was like yeah, no, I know, they're the stairwells, it. Yeah, it can be a little crazy. And she's like, no, in your apartment. And I was like that's weird, they don't really come into the apartment that much. And she was like well, they did. Last night I was trying to go to sleep and I was like sort of drifting off and someone like kind of poked me like, kicked me awake and I was like really, and she said, she opened her eyes and above her was standing this man. She described the exact man that.

Speaker 3:

I had seen yeah yeah, and I mean down to like the every is such specific details, right like there's no way she could have known, and she was like she was disturbed, you know. She was like worried. Um, the stories get a little bit darker from there and I won't go into that. I'm saving some of this for the memoir that I'm writing about my time in New Orleans. Um, but I still don't really know why that particular ghost had an issue with my my friend, who became my friend, my friend's wife, um, but he was maybe a little bit protective of me and he didn't know her and knew that I didn't really know her, and so it's kind of giving her a little like who the hell are you? What are you doing here? Um, but yeah, the ghosts were very sad when when I were very sad when I had to leave that place.

Speaker 3:

It was a big, beautiful mansion on the corner of Bourbon and Esplanade, three stories from the 1800s with gorgeous marble fireplaces and chandeliers. It was insane and I paid $500 a month for basically almost the whole top floor. Yeah, this was pre pre Katrina, new Orleans. Um, it was crumbling and very dangerous, um, but it was a dream to live there, but ghosts and all.

Speaker 2:

I really love that he was looking out for you. I think that's so sweet, like making sure you don't fall off your platforms. You're safe when you're hooking up your bike.

Speaker 3:

Making sure you don't fall off your platforms, you're safe when you're hooking up your bike?

Speaker 3:

yeah, exactly yeah, he's like who the hell are you? You know, I I really got the sense when I was just sitting with his spirit that he, he wanted me to see him, and I think that my sense is that it takes kind of a lot for ghosts, especially the the longer they've been around, to make themselves so visible, like that. I think a lot of the ones that we see that are kind of more ephemeral or amorphous have sort of lost the memory of who they were and they don't really know how to make a shape to themselves anymore. And he still remembered who he was, I think, very clearly, and I do feel like he was a bit stuck there.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for sharing that. We're excited about your memoirs. That's cool.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's in process, but it is, it's coming along. Um, it's a a deep dive into trauma and hurricane katrina and also a love letter of what it was like to live in new orleans before katrina. Um, you know, in the you know, late 90s, early 2000s, it was a really different world, really everywhere, but it was a special, a special time that I want to try to capture and share.

Speaker 2:

We're going to shift gears a little bit and ask one of our favorite questions. We have two favorite questions Are you a rebel? And we also always ask favorite questions. We have two favorite questions are you a rebel? And we also always ask who are your romani crushes? And this is basically any roma you admire, who you want to shout out so listeners can find out more about them. You guys, big time, big time so, um, but also jenaline joseph.

Speaker 3:

But also Janeline Joseph, who you had on the show, made me so happy. I have so much, yeah, just respect for what she's doing with Sastimo's holistic health and love how she brings herbalism into her path and tradition. And, yeah, longtime friend Caitlin Foisey as well. She's such a brilliant artist and like her, her aesthetic and her vision and just what she, what she does, yeah, I have a lot of love for for both of those amazing, amazing beings. So I could, I could go on and on, I could go on and on, but those are like, yeah, top, like, yeah, top, top, top tier yeah, we love a top tier crush um, what do you have coming up on the horizon and how can people support you?

Speaker 3:

oh well, uh, I actually have a fun event coming up in New Orleans as well. I'm going to be hosting a Samhain retreat over Day of the Dead and All Souls Day. So on November 1st, 2nd and 3rd, right outside New Orleans in a really beautiful space. We're going to be doing ritual and workshops and going really deep. It's going to be super, super magical. I'll be hosting that with my longtime dear, dear friend, raven Hinojosa. So that is all coming together and people who are interested can definitely reach out to me through my website email, of course, and definitely reach out to me through my website email, of course. You know social media, facebook, instagram.

Speaker 3:

I do host new moon and full moon live tarot readings. That are a lot of fun. They're very connective, beautiful community meets there to just unpack the spread and talk tarot and talk magic and, yeah, everything, everything under the sun that comes up. It's often like very silly and sweet and, yeah, it's good, good energy, um and wow. What are the other ways? I mean, if you're interested in getting a tarot reading, I would love to read for anyone listening that feels called. You can always book uh via my website and I read for people, uh, all over the country all over the world via phone, uh or zoom love that.

Speaker 2:

Yes, definitely check out your website, both of them and yeah, thank you so much for being here. This was such a delightful conversation. We got stories, we got tarot theory, we got it all.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yay I had a really great time talking with you and I look forward to the spooky season. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Our favorite time.

Speaker 3:

Yes indeed. Thanks so much for having me on y'all. I really appreciate it and love getting to connect with you, Love what you do and hope your spooky season is full of magic and mystery.

Speaker 2:

Thank you Likewise, and, listeners, if you are looking for something a little extra magical, make sure to check out our book, if you haven't already. It makes a great gift, and Paulina and I tell some stories about little psychic events and things like that, and we just need a little help getting the word out, because you know we're doing this all on our own.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, thank you to our. Sorry, I thought I was on mute.

Speaker 3:

But, thank you to our supporters. See you guys, bye.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to Romanistan Podcast.

Speaker 2:

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 fundraiser, ko-ficom backslash romanistan, and please rate, review and subscribe. It helps people find our show.

Speaker 1:

it helps us so much you can follow jez on instagram at jasminavantila and paulina at romani holistic. 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 2:

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.