Romanistan
The authors of Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling present: Romanistan! Do you love rebels? Do you want to live in a place where outcasts shine their brightest? Welcome to Romanistan! We're your friendly neighborhood Gypsies, celebrating Romani identity and outcast culture, and practicing good diplomatic relations with other marginalized communities.
We love the rebels who are living their truth, even if it clashes with tradition. We also love tradition and honoring our roots. This podcast is for everyone who loves and supports Roma & 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. Let's sit crooked and talk straight.
Hosted by Paulina Stevens and Jezmina Von Thiele. We reclaim the slur Gypsy, but if you aren’t Romani, we prefer you don't use it. xoxo.
P.S. The Romani people are a diasporic ethnic group originally from northwest India, circa the 10th century. Now, Roma live all over the globe, and due to centuries of oppression, slavery, genocide, and other atrocities, Roma are still fighting for basic human rights. We seek to raise awareness of who Roma are, and highlight Romani resilience, creativity, & culture.
Romanistan
Andra Zlătescu on music and witchcraft
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Andra Zlătescu is a musician, performer, and illustrator, who performs as part of the band Willow Switch, Spindle Collective, and as a solo performer. Andra plays the singing saw (a carpentry saw played with a violin bow that evokes the haunting wail of the wind in the trees), banjo, guitar, and sings. Andra is passionate about creation that serves to act as a spell to open the doorways- to honour the land, their ancestors and traditions, to celebrate the bodies’ connection with the cycles of the seasons and death//life//death; To invoke the daemons of the crossroads- crossroads of paths meeting, of ancestry, of the past and future as they simultaneously exist within the present moment to weave our stories through time and sing us into the ancestors we are in the process of becoming. Andra premiered at TIFF as one of the main subjects in the documentary COVEN, a film exploring the relationship between Witchcraft and feminism. Willow Switch just released their first album on Samhain and completed two music and pagan Festival tours across Ontario. You can find them on Spotify and Apple Music. Andra is currently in the process of recording a solo album at Half Moon Studio in Toronto.
The Romani crush this episode is Mariska Veres, lead singer of Shocking Blue.
Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.
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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. Join us for the Welcome to Romanistan Festival from December 3-8, 2024 in New Orleans!
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
Welcome to Romanistan. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies. I'm Jez. Paulina will be here soon, but we're doing all of this stacked recording while we are getting ready for our book tour, so it's a little crazy. She's going to join us later.
Speaker 2The topics for today are witchcraft and music. But before we get into the interview, we have some announcements. We are well into our Secrets of Romani Fortune-Telling book tour by now, but it is not too late to support us through our travel GoFundMe, despite the monthly donations that we get through our coffee fundraiser that's KO-FI. We are so, so, so grateful for those. But you know, honestly, we lose money making this niche podcast every month because it is niche, you can't like, you can't monetize niche. So and we're also trying to make it sound professional you know niche and we're also trying to make it sound professional we hire an editor who, honestly, is just so kind to us and so good to us, and we do it because we love Romani culture and we want to keep spotlighting Roma doing great things. So this is a labor of love. You may or may not know this, but book writing also doesn't really bring in money and the book tour is entirely self-funded, just like the podcast. So your generous donations make both of these things happen. We're trying really hard to connect with people one-on-one, to sell the book, of course, but also we want to share the cultural context of fortune telling in person, making human connections, in the hopes that Gage or non-Roma will start to care more about our cultural contributions and include Roma and allyship. We're also touring to connect with Roma in other places, which is really cool, and we hope that this book gives people an opportunity to see themselves better represented in media. We're topping off the tour with the first Romani arts festival of its kind in New Orleans, and it is produced by Bimbo Yaga Productions, who you may know as former guest or previous guest, I suppose, ilva Mara Rozhizhevsky. This is so exciting. It's taking place December 4th through 8th. It's featuring Romani artists and performers, as well as some non-Romani ancestral knowledge keepers like Lilith Dorsey.
Speaker 2When you donate, you are directly supporting Romani arts and culture and we will give you presents for donating. Right now, our fundraiser is the best way to get a signed copy outside of attending our book events. For $30, you can get a book plate which is actually just a sticker that we sign, and you can stick it inside any book that you purchase, or for $50, you can get a signed paperback copy. And if you can't donate, no worries, we get it. But please feel free to share our travel GoFundMe it's linked in our bios on social media and on rem romanistanpodcastcom and encourage others to donate, because it really makes such a difference. And if you want to contribute to our monthly podcast fund, you can go to our Ko-fi, which is linked at the show notes as well as on our social media and website too. Now on with the show.
Speaker 2Andra Zlatescu is a musician, performer and illustrator who performs as part of the band Willow Switch Spindle Collective and as a solo performer. Andra plays the singing saw a carpentry saw with a violin bow that evokes the haunting wail of the wind in the trees banjo guitar and sings. Andra is passionate about creation. That serves to act as a spell to open the doorways, to honor the land, their ancestors and traditions, to celebrate the body's connection with the cycles of the seasons and death, life, death. To invoke the daemons of the crossroads crossroads of paths meeting, of ancestry, of the past and future as they simultaneously exist within the present moment. To weave our stories through time and sing us into the ancestors we are in the process of becoming.
Ancestral Memory and Witchcraft Journeys
Speaker 2Andra premiered at TIFF as one of the main subjects in the documentary Coven, a film exploring the relationship between witchcraft and feminism. Willow Switch just released their first album on Samhain and completed two music and pagan festival tours across Ontario. You can find them on Spotify and Apple Music. And Ontario. You can find them on Spotify and Apple Music. Andra is currently in the process of recording a solo album at Half Moon Studio in Toronto. Yay, welcome, we're so happy to have you here.
Speaker 3Thank you so much. I am so honored to be here.
Speaker 2And Paulina is here to join us.
Speaker 3Welcome in, yay, oh hello hello, I'm sorry you can't see me, but it's really nice to see you yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2So it's so nice to be able to connect with our guests. Like it's not quite in person, but it's almost, it's almost it's good enough.
Speaker 4We're there in spirit, yeah so tell us about yourself.
Speaker 2Where are you from, where's your family from? What's your visa?
Speaker 3so I was born in Dikers, romania, and so are my parents. My tati and his side of the family are Zlatan traditionally. He did not raise me traditionally and he was not raised traditionally, so it was very assimilated into Romanian culture and my mommy is Romanian, balkan mutt mix of things. Yeah, and both of my parents were part of the Romanian revolution. They fought against the Ceaușescu regime and then came to Turtle Island after the borders opened up.
Speaker 2Well, that's amazing. Yeah, thank you for sharing.
Speaker 3Absolutely.
Speaker 4So one of our questions we always ask our guests is if they consider themselves a rebel. So do you?
Speaker 3no-transcript. In order to create the world that I feel I need to thrive, you know, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, through art, through music, because those often aren't the worlds that are given to us.
Speaker 2Yeah, art and music are just such magical ways to connect with culture, with family. I love that it feels like this is a theme in your work that your music, your heritage, your spirituality all intersect and I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3I like, completely, like, was like. Oh, I forgot to answer the previous question of why I was talking about that, so I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
Speaker 2No, no, go ahead.
Speaker 3But no, all of that was to say, like my daddy, like my father, he was a poet and he was a traveler and he was like an incredible visual artist and he was also an educator. He did a lot of grassroots resistance work um, around helping communities, kind of resist corporations coming in to take their resources, and um, yeah, he worked for the revolutionary paper before the fall of the communist regime. And so I feel like that spirit is definitely within me. I feel very connected to him and my lineage in that way. I think often when we think about like rebelling, we think about rebelling against our family rather than trying to find those streams just of knowledge that we carry and finding healthy ways to bring them forward into our lives that's what an incredible legacy.
Speaker 2Oh my gosh. I just thank you for sharing that about him.
Speaker 4That's so, so cool yeah, I kind of liked how you put those layers into it too, where it's like you don't always have to rebel against your family. Um, I had to do both.
Speaker 3No, I also have to do both right you have to find a balance sometimes, yeah, yeah. So my mother's side is all like doctors and neurologists and extremely like practical science, people who are all like logic over intuition and like, if I can't see it, it's not a real thing. So I think, definitely, we always carry multiple worlds inside of us.
Speaker 1You and your lovers love. You and your lovers love. Go on, someone come so.
Speaker 2So you're in a very cool documentary called Coven in which three young people explore what it means to be a witch today and for listeners people living in Canada can watch on CBC Gem, and people outside of Canada can get creative in figuring out how to watch it. Can you tell us about your experience in Coven and what it means to you to be a witch?
Speaker 3Absolutely. So this really ties into the last question quite a bit, because the way that my participation with Coven started felt very, very, very magical and very synchronous. I got a call from a wiccan high priestess that I know. Um, her name is ann marie, she's in the film. And she gives me a phone call and she's like, hey, we're like shooting this kind of like spooky trailer for this witchcraft film. Do you want to just come like do spooky things and, you know, be filmed? Um, and I was like, yeah, okay, whatever, sure, and I show up, be filmed. And I was like, yeah, okay, whatever, sure, and I show up.
Speaker 3And that's when I met Rama Rao, the director of Coven, and initially she just wanted to interview me. And when I started speaking to her, I started telling her about my father's stories and he raised me on folklore and on stories of like the sacred sites in Romania, including Bata Vrejitoarelor, which is the witch's lake, where Romani women like and witches Vrejitoare will gather at certain times of the year to do ritual, and the Hoia Baciu, which is considered the most haunted forest on the planet and is known for its portals and strange appearances, and trees that grow in spirals, and scientists can't explain why these trees are growing in these formations. And so I was raised on these stories and folklore and this really, really magical worldview, you know, where, like, everything is alive, everything has spirit. There's this beauty and poetry and the way that you move through the world, very much by my father and by my grandmother. And so I started telling Ramarao, the director of these stories, and by the time I was done speaking to her, she says well, I want to bring you, like I want to take you to every single one of these places and I'm going to have like CBC fund it all and we're going to travel across the Carpathian mountains to all of these places from your Thati's stories.
Speaker 3And through that, I also got to meet the Minka family, who are traditionally practicing Vraji Tuade, and it was this really intense, really beautiful experience because I met them and I had a lot of like fear and insecurity, you know, just being like I wasn't raised like traditionally, like I want to make sure I'm like being respectful and just like yeah, and they were so welcoming and they had me like they welcomed me into their circle, they had me practice with them, like they gave me this absolutely beautiful dress. You know, to like match all of them, like in this ritual, and it was just a really, really powerful, like very validating experience for me to feel seen by these like very beautiful, very powerful women who come from this like long lineage of witches, and it's really cool too because I believe they're like one of the few family groups where it's the women who work traditionally that is so awesome.
Speaker 2I mean, we're huge fans of the Minka family and their work, like their rituals, are stunning. Their collaborations with Jouvelapen are just so, so cool and political and empowering. I love that you got to go visit all these places. Had you been back to Romania anytime recently, or was it like a new kind of homecoming to you?
Speaker 3It definitely felt like a homecoming. It felt like experiencing the land in a completely new way. When I would go growing up, it would be to visit my grandparents, and so we would stay very much in Bucharest or go to the ocean or we would go to the Carpathians from time to time. But Romania is quite a big country so I hadn't been to many of the different parts of it. I had never been to Baku. I had never been to Cluj, near where Hoya Baciu is. So it had never occurred to me in my own mind to actually link the threads of these stories in order to experience these places for myself.
Speaker 3But I was writing songs about them and I was writing songs for them. I felt that connection. So getting to be there and I really felt like my dad had like a huge part in making this happen and like weaving that thread for me was so beautiful and so powerful and connected me to him and to that land and to those traditions, and getting to actually sing those songs that I had just written, like that came from, like you know, within me somewhere to those actual places and, in the case of Hoya Bachu, like I was there and it just felt as if I had been there before. And this is how I feel our stories weave these threads where we don't just tell a story but we bring that memory and we share that memory and we share that feeling and it becomes a part of somebody else's experience, so like actually physically being there, felt like so at home and so familiar because of him yeah, that makes so much sense.
Speaker 2I Ancestral memory is strong and real.
Speaker 3Definitely, and it's so powerful and I think when you feel that call, you know you need to find your own tangled path to navigating it and walking it in the best way that you're able and I think a lot about. I took that course with you on Chohani.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 3And that poem is so beautiful because it talks about that spirit and how that spirit brings retribution. Is that the correct footnote?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah, people who like stray from a traditional way of life and so finding the ways in which, like I, can align that within myself and have integrity. You know, as I walk this path, I'm rambling so much, I'm so sorry. No, no, you're doing great.
Speaker 2For any listeners wondering what the poem is, it's called the apparition of shohani and it's by the fantastic poet lumanita mikhai chioaba, and I was lucky enough to meet her in person because she does a poetry festival like a romani poetry and arts festival of course you did, because you always meet everybody.
Speaker 1I'm a.
Speaker 2Leo, I love to meet so cool like. I just want to go to the music festival.
Speaker 2I didn't know that was happening oh my gosh, yeah, it's in October. Um, pretty much every year you should reach out to Luminita. She's so great and I'm sure she would absolutely love to have you. Um, she was really funny. My favorite memory of spending time with her because it was a huge deal for me, because I am like a mega fan, I'm obsessed with her. I read that poem, I taught that poem for years, and then one day she reached out to me and she was like do you want to go to my festival? And I like started crying. I was like, oh, gotta be cool. And so I was just basically like hanging on her every word and following her around like a puppy like the whole time. And then she turned to me and she was like you could do anything for me, wouldn't you? And I was like yes, and she was like I like that, she's like, oh, she's perfect wow, I want to embody that energy one day.
Speaker 2She's a queen.
Speaker 1I love that, gave our lives a formless hand and now it lies before us. Mother, carry me your child, I will always be Mother. Carry me Down to the sea. My wings are burning now. My home is the Lord are burning down my home.
Speaker 4It is your home I stand close to this world of you and trials are born. Now can we catch this thirst, thirst. So in our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, which is available for pre-order, we explain that not all Romani fortune tellers are witches, and vice versa, but some consider themselves both. How would you describe your connection to or understanding of Romani witchcraft?
Speaker 3For me, my witchcraft practice probably started and solidified when I was very young. I was eight years old and my dad got me my first tarot deck and it's the golden tarot, which is really, really beautiful because we're so. I felt that connection with it and I've been using that to read ever since then and for me it's very much trying to build a relationship with the land that I'm on in a meaningful, reciprocal way to honor my ancestors, um, and the spirits of the land. And when I play music and I light a candle and I draw, oh, my god, I'm like rambling in so many directions.
Music and Witchcraft
Speaker 3I'm so sorry, um no, you're doing great yeah, I was gonna say you're not rambling, we are listening we are wrapped with attention yeah, um, so when I am playing music, I will draw a sigil on the ground to start and I'll light a candle, and that candle symbolizes calling in my ancestors to listen and to be witnessed and to be present, and also as an acknowledgement that that inspiration comes from them and also returns back to them as a gift. And so trying to live in reciprocity with the land I'm on to me, like not only means like honoring my ancestors and heritage, and I learned so much, like I'm so grateful for all the people that have taught me and also a huge part of learning those traditions is finding ways back to my own heart, and you know, the only teachers you should follow are the ones that guide you back to your own heart. And so I've had, like, some incredible, beautiful teachers from different um, and just learned so much from them, especially if they were raised like traditionally. But yeah, and so part of honoring my ancestors and all of my ancestors, you know, because, like I am a mixed race person um is also acknowledging my ancestors that have been like shitty or have been oppressors, and acknowledging them in a way where not like you celebrate them or you hold them up, but you hold the truth of how your physical body came to be in the present moment and exist in the present moment and acknowledge the parts of that history that are fraught with violence, and that is in order to heal those lineages, moving forward and find the power and the strength and resilience and like the beauty of our traditional culture, of our traditional culture and a lot of those old pathways and those old ways of being in the world have been like actively taken. So having to carve new roads that allow us to thrive is extremely important.
Speaker 3And so my witchcraft, my magic, you know I don't believe there's this binary between, like good and bad magic. I believe that there is life force. I believe that you have to be able to sit with the shadow aspects, like sit with death. If you're going to be on this path of witchcraft, to be a Vrajitwara, you have to be comfortable with all of it and then you can choose what you do. Um, you have to go in the depths of your own being and spirit and sit with your grief and anger and sense of loss and uncertainty and fear, and like move through that in order to find your voice and stand in your power.
Speaker 3And for me, like witchcraft is so much about, like claiming our powers as creators, destroyers, because I don't think you can separate those things. And so if you're afraid of destruction, if you're afraid of letting your fire burn brightly in order to burn down like these oppressive systems that are killing us, that don't serve us, you're not going to be able to make space to create the worlds in which we can thrive mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically, and carve out those paths. And my hope is to carve those roads and pathways with music, with art, with the way that we weave and engage with people and try to build community. You know, and I think it's so beautiful to be sitting here with both of you, um, because when I was first reconnecting and trying to find my own footing to my Domani heritage, um, I sat and like reached out to you, jasmina, and took a lot of your courses and you had so much beauty, you know, and saying like everybody has their place and everybody has their voice and everybody has, like a space in this community, and you really held me up in that way and that really just helped me know how to move forward and know how to just like, honor my truth and take care of my being and be proud of all of the parts of me because, like Romanian culture is like extremely racist um and being assimilated into that culture, you know, for protection, your status or wealth, and like all of these reasons that are very valid reasons, like if you continue to carry those things in your body like they make you really sick or you know they make me really sick, like I'm still learning how to shed these things from my system and move through the world with integrity.
Speaker 3And I believe witchcraft is about using your voice, stepping into your power um, to sing a new world into being. But it's also a very old world, you know. It's like the old paths, like meeting the future and being that bridge ¶¶ ¶.
Speaker 1Mother, son, don't you go ¶¶ ¶ To the creek? It's out of bounds. After the dark, when the sun had gone down, after the dark when you're close.
Speaker 2That is so, so beautiful. Thank you so much for your kind words. I'm so glad that I was I don't know helping you feel validated. I definitely was given that advice myself from folks when I was trying to understand what my place is as a writer and how much space I should or shouldn't take up, and multiple people had said to me well, like the assimilated experience is a Romani experience, like that's just everyone has their own experience. So that's what you're doing and it just it really helped me and so I'm really glad that. I'm glad that that felt real for you and I just I want to talk more about your, your music too, because I just love this idea of art and witchcraft. You know music and witchcraft being so interwoven I feel like that with my own art forms so the Doom Folk Band, willow Switch, and you're also in other bands and you do your own solo work. So, in general, tell us more about your music. In what way does it feel wrapped up with witchcraft and your heritage? We would just love to hear more absolutely.
Navigating Witchcraft and Cultural Appropriation
Speaker 3Um. So my music, I sing for my ancestors, I sing for the spirits of the land, I call them forward to be present with me, and I laid a candle at the beginning, which represents the connection between the living and the dead and crossing that bridge, and that this is now like a liminal space. You know, this is a crossroad space. We are opening the doorway to the other worlds to welcome our ancestors and to welcome those spirits and sing with them and for them, and my bandmate is Anishinaabe Moen. So it's this really beautiful crossroads of my traditions and their traditions and just how we set that space together. You know how we also honor the spirits of this land here and the histories and how we've come to be yeah, shared histories too, of like colonization, and just like the beauty of getting to create that space together and share our respective traditions. And then spindle collective is a theater collective that I'm with right now.
Speaker 3Um, we are putting on a play.
Speaker 3It actually wasn't written by me, but somebody sent me a casting call, and it is about Balkan folklore, which was wild, because the audition said you know, we're looking for like musicians who are instrumentalists, because we're putting on this play and it's actually set in Hoya Bachu and this was right after I had come back from the documentary too, so it was just like a very bizarre series of events and I'm working on that right now and it's going to be Black Creek Pioneer Village outside in the forest, and I'm really really excited about that project because it's about two women in Transylvania in the 1700s and their different birth experiences and it's a folk horror play and the horror aspect is around like fear of women's bodies and how these different women like navigate those experiences and how the land carries memory, how the land like carries trauma and also healing and resilience, and it's such a beautiful story, so I'm really really excited to get to be a part of it literally nothing happens for no reason, like there's no way that you could have asked, like you could have asked the universe to give you a situation like that, and like you would just come back from there.
Speaker 4I was just thinking like that's way too. Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 3It's like nothing happens for no reason for sure absolutely, and I also believe that those spirits call us home and we may not fully understand at first, but they have ways of showing us. So I play this incredible instrument called the singing saw, which is literally a carpentry saw that you pull the sound out with a violin bow and it makes these beautiful, haunting, ethereal, kind of like screeching noises that are simultaneously like so harmonious and so disharmonious and so jarring and so viscerally powerful. And I really adore that we can take these instruments. You know of the old world, you know like you can take a saw, which is a tool that has been used to cut down trees. You know you can also like use this tool to build a house like, and it has so many different purposes, but that we can take these like very like simple tools that we've been using for so many years and use them to create beautiful music and create new things. And it really makes me think about how we need to like build new worlds with what we have and kind of like start where we are and start with the tools that we carry and the gifts and the medicine that we carry within our body and then like grow and expand from there.
Speaker 3And I think often we look for our power outside of ourselves, and I see this a lot with like people who are drawn to witchcraft, but it's, like, relatively new to them, and they're always trying to start with like things far outside of themselves rather than their points of strength. And you know, like, when people because I've worked at an occult shop for quite a while too and when people come to me and they're asking for protection, magic, I always start with like well, what makes you feel safe? What makes you feel like you're standing in your power? Is it a color? Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is there a way that you can gather these things around you in order to create your spell, create your magic, because it's going to work the best if you make it.
Speaker 3And it's the same with like when people come and buy herbs, you know I ask like, what are the herbs your ancestors used? What are the herbs you grew up with? Like, do you have a relationship with these already? Like, um, so how do we build meaningful relationships, like directly with these spirits? Because you know they are beings, they exist outside of us and their medicine isn't going to be accessible to us if we don't honor, like their personhood and their inherent like spirit.
Speaker 3Um, and you know, especially around conversations around like cultural appropriation, and when people come into the shop and they want to buy sage, and you know, like, I ask them that like is are there any plants that you have a relationship, that your ancestors had a relationship with, like what makes you feel protective, what makes you feel safe, what makes you feel, um, like cleansed in your being?
Speaker 3Um, because that's always going to work so much better than taking from somebody else and like replicating those colonial relationships. And I see it with tarot too. You know, like, so many people love the tarot and it's a meaningful tool for them and they have this really like important relationship with it and it's like really meaningful to them, but they don't acknowledge the history of that tool, they don't honor that history, they don't honor Domani people and the ways that we've used the taro like to provide for ourselves, like historically, and to take care of our families, to take care of ourselves. And so I just I don't believe that the medicine or the doorways that those tools have the potential to open are going to be open fully if you're not also honoring the history of how you came to be engaging with them in the first place.
Speaker 2Oh, 100%. Yeah, I know we both resonate so strong with that and it's the whole reason we wrote the book we wrote, and it is so amazing to help people remember or reconnect with their relationships with plants and spirits that they already have, rather than looking to outside themselves. So I think a lot of people grow up feeling like they don't have culture, or at least like a lot of the Americans I talk to, who are like what am I trying to say? Not from a marginalized group, almost feel like they don't have a culture, and so they're kind of looking to other places.
Speaker 2So I love reminding people that we all have our ancestors and our cultures and places we came from.
Speaker 3Yeah, and sometimes those things may not exist in our logical minds and the way we expect them to, but they exist in our body as a feeling. And so like following those feelings home is about stepping into your power, because the moment you're looking for something outside of yourself to fill that or answer those questions for you. Like building community and finding teachers and building relationships is a beautiful thing, but you should never be giving somebody the power you know to come between you and your direct experience of the sacred, Because hierarchy is fraught with abuse and there are so many like, especially in pagan spaces, like there are so many people holding themselves up as gurus in these ways, and I don't think that's what magic is. I think magic is about finding your own spirit and your own fire and allowing it to burn brightly.
Speaker 2And if you start from a place of disempowerment, you know it's like the is like like a lifestyle brand, you know like witchcraft or whatever it may be that you're holding on to, like that's still incredibly disempowering if it's not coming from your heart and from your spirit and making you feel more like yourself yeah, something that I have realized um about both Paulina and I have realized as we're trying to market this book is that a lot of pagan spaces really don't have any reason to want to acknowledge the Romani cultural context for divination and other things that they do or certain types of divination, and so the way that we've been having to pitch it is such that it's like marketable, like it's this is going to.
Speaker 2We have to feed into the machine to do it, and it's part of why we picked the title. We did the secrets of our money fortune telling, and you know we're just giving context to what has already been taken from us or what we've shared and has been separated from us over the years and has been separated from us over the years. We're not divulging anything closed practice or anything, but it's almost like you have to convince people that doing the right thing is marketable. It's dark.
Speaker 3Yeah, absolutely, and I'm sure you've encountered this too. But the stereotypes lie so thick and so heavy and so old in the air that you often have to come up against understanding yourself in relation to that, rather than just existing as yourself and getting to define what it means for you to move through the world, um, as a little mini person. Um, and, yeah, it's. It's very bizarre. It's a very bizarre thing to navigate, because you have to see yourself through the eyes of other people first before you can like, almost like, feel out like what is true and what sits right and like.
Speaker 3Most of it is not. You know, most of it is like really hurtful and really convoluted, you know, like a strange, like romanticized, like folk tale that people like to hold on to because it's an escapist fantasy. But when you're choosing the escapist fantasy and you're not acknowledging the real people in the real history in front of you, you're not allowing those people to like, thrive and exist in a meaningful way, like you're not making space in the real world for people to lead good lives and healthy lives oh, so true, it's um, it's scary and it's terrifying yeah speaking of, do you have any scary stories you can share with us?
Speaker 3absolutely I do. Yeah, what? What scary stories do you have for us for spooky season? So, um, when I was taking a bushcraft course with canadian bushcraft it was an advanced winter survival course and was on Hiawatha reserve, and we had a collective ghost experience which was um, shared between three different people that night, and it was minus 40 degrees, it was the middle of winter and we were all sleeping within a teepee and there was a fire in the center and about two meters from the fire there was a tree stump that we had been using to put like pens and dishes and things like that on, and so everybody's sleeping on boughs of cedar around this fire.
Spirits, Appreciation, and Future Projects
Speaker 3And I had this incredibly vivid dream that I had to get up and go outside and use the washroom. And I came back and I got very confused because there was this tall sinewy, like white man, just like so mean looking, hollow eyes like, and he was laughing very meanly, like a mocking laugh. And at that moment in my dream, suddenly I wake up because the girl next to me has jumped up, because the little tree stump that was two meters away from the fire has suddenly like exploded with flames, like right after I hear this like man's mean laughter in my dream, and so we're frantically putting the fire out. Putting the fire out, we managed to put the fire out. We all go back to sleep and the next morning we're talking about it and the third girl who had been asleep beside me, um, so I do know I had a very strange experience last night.
Speaker 3I got up and I had to go to the washroom, um, in the bush, and I came back and I got very confused because I saw this shadow like on the side of the teepee that looked like a tall man, and I heard this like really weird, like kind of mean laughter.
Speaker 3And then I saw like the fire like jump up and like grow really big. And it was so bizarre because it felt like I had dreamed her experience while seeing what was actually there. And then there had been this response in the physical world, even though it was like just like suddenly, like the fire burning the tree stump, that was like quite far from the fire, um, right at that moment too. So it definitely felt like not a nice ghost, like at all, like just kind of like cruel mocking laughter. But often when you have these experiences and you tell people and they're like, oh, you dreamed it or whatever, like you know, like it was your imagination. But to have that experience like shared between multiple people at like different levels of reality and like planes of consciousness, was just very haunting and very strange.
Speaker 2That is so scary. Did anyone have any theories on what that spirit was?
Speaker 3Nobody did. No, I truly do not know, and I don't know that anybody had seen that spirit before. So it could have just been somebody like, I think, caleb, around the bushcraft course. I don't know Like it could have been somebody who had lived there that, you know, was like angry and not at rest. But yeah, we don't know who that was, who that mean man was. I don't know was who that mean man was. I don't know.
Speaker 1I sometimes feel like fire and electricity has some kind of equal, like frequency that the spirits can travel through, absolutely definitely in huge ways.
Speaker 4I agree, I love you. Do you have any romani crushes?
Speaker 3um, so that just for listeners that don't know, that's just roma that you either admire or want to shout out um, like honestly, jasmina, like, oh yeah, like that's not just because I'm like here sitting with you, like I've felt that way for a long time. I'm just such a fan of everything that you do, like there's so much beauty in your spirit you share with the world, and I'm so grateful to get to sit here and speak with you directly and like so deeply honored that you've asked me to share this space and you too, paulina, like to meet you is like really like such a gift. I'm really really grateful. Um, I also just like absolutely adore the singer, mariska Veras, who was the lead singer of Shocking Bloop. Um, I believe she passed away like a couple of years ago, but they are one of my favorite bands and she's just like a beautiful woman, incredible performer. Um, and her father was Lil Mani, so I feel a connection to her in that way as well well, thank you.
Speaker 4Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2That is so kind. I thank you so much. I'm gonna cry and also I need to look up this band. Did you say shocking blue? Oh, shocking blue.
Speaker 3They're like a disco band from the 60s, um, and they have you've probably heard it like on the venus razor commercials. Like that I'm your venus song, oh, but they have a lot of like. Never marry a railroad man is one of my favorites. Like they have so many just good songs. They're so like dancey and catchy and she just has like the most badass style I'm so excited.
Speaker 2I love this question because we we learn about all these wonderful people who we didn't know of makes me so happy and, um, we also love to end with this question. It's been so much fun talking to you. Um, what do you have coming up on the horizon, and how can people best support your work?
Speaker 3um, well, I am in the process of recording my own album, so when that comes out it would mean so much to me. Um, if you listen to it, willow switch. My band is on spotify and apple music. We have a few upcoming shows. We're playing Toronto Pagan Pride if you want to come. If you're around, we're playing a show in Hamilton this weekend with some other kind of like folk punk bands, so, like you know, moshing to the banjo kind of music and Sampka. The play that I was talking about by spindle collective and riot king um is running from september 25th I guess maybe this episode will be out after that but to october 5th and hopefully it'll be an ongoing project. So you can follow that and try to see that. Um, yeah, that's what I'm up to ah, so cool.
Speaker 2You do so many cool things and what a delight to have you here.
Speaker 3Such a joy thank you so much. You do so many cool things too, and I'm very grateful that our paths crossed me too.
Speaker 4Yeah, thank you for coming today and we appreciate you and thank you to our listeners yes, thank you everyone. We love you so much for having me, yeah, you all have an extremely soothing voice and so I just like it's like asmr.
Speaker 3Yeah I can listen to it all day so much I have like very like romanian pronunciation, like on a lot of things, like some words like sit like funny in my mouth because in romanian we say it on money and so like I I struggle like rolling that r I switch back and forth with the way that I say Romani and I like come in and out of a like a Massachusetts mill town accent after my parents.
Speaker 2It's important not to look too closely at anything.
Speaker 3Yeah right like it's like, yeah, but it was so beautiful to meet you both and thank you so much for like honoring me with your time. That really really means a lot and I hope that we get to meet in the future. I forgot we got to speak again, um, and I'm going to try and take more of your courses thank you so so much.
Speaker 2Oh, thank you for listening to romanistan podcast you can find us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Romanasan Podcast and on Twitter at RomanasanPod, To support us, join our Patreon for extra content or just donate to our Ko-Fi fundraiser, ko-ficom backslash Romanasan, and please rate, review and subscribe. It helps people find our show.
Speaker 4It 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 2Romanistan is hosted by Jasmina Vontila and Paulina Stevens, conceived of by Paulina Stevens, edited by Victor Pachas, with music by Victor Pachas and artwork by Elijah Fajardo.