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
Tarot for the week of January 5, 2026
A three-card New Year spread invites honest feeling, value-based money choices, and bold hope. We read Five of Cups for love, Justice for money, and The Star for guidance, then share community updates and a ritual to reset your year.
• Five of Cups as a call to feel and set boundaries in love
• holding gratitude and grief at the same time
• Justice as financial fairness and value alignment
• mutual aid, nonprofit support, and paying creative labor
• The Star as trust, balance, and acting like success is certain
• reframing resolutions toward joy, health, and intention
• invitation to a New Year ritual, MAKE IT HAPPEN, with astrology and tarot
• Ko-Fi donations to sustain the show
You can book 1:1 readings with Jez at jezminavonthiele.com, and book readings and holistic healing sessions with Paulina at romaniholistic.com.
Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.
You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, BlueSky, 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. If you love it, please give us 5 stars on Amazon & Goodreads. Visit https://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 Bianca
Music by Viktor Pachas
Artwork by Elijah Vardo
Welcome to Romana's name. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsy. I'm Paulina. And I'm Jess, and we are here with your reading for the week of January 5th, 2026.
SPEAKER_00:First reading of the year. So we have the Five of Cups for Love, Justice for Money, and the Star for Overall Guidance. Let's start off with Five of Cups for Love. What are your thoughts, Paulina?
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So the Five of Cups is representing us needing to walk away from something. And because it's love, we don't know. Is it walking away from the whole relationship? Is it walking away temporarily? Is it letting go of certain parts or practices in the relationship? Whether this is for love life, whether this is for personal relationships, um acquaintances, family. I mean, I feel like it's about walking away because it's just time to move on to the next chapter, no matter how much you have built over the years, like you need to let go of attachments. What do you think?
SPEAKER_00:I think this is such good advice, and I always think of the five of cups as a reminder to feel your feelings. If something feels bad, this is not the week to push it aside and pretend everything is fine. Uh fine. This is the week to let yourself feel anger, sadness, disappointment, grief, anything that is really tugging on your heartstrings because that emotional experience is a good teacher for you and it's telling you about how you need to approach the relationships that you have in your life. Like you were saying, like, is it a step away? Is it a few steps away? Is it a really big step away? Well, depending on how you're feeling, you'll know what you need to do. And you probably got to talk about it. The other nice thing about this card is that some of the cups are upright, some of them are turned over. You might have positive feelings and difficult feelings. You can hold both. This is a both and things are probably not black and white. You can have gratitude and appreciation for an experience, even if it causes you grief. And so this is a good time to validate all your feelings, especially around relationships and have some nuance and understanding. It's not just one or the other all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:And then justice for money. What are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER_01:I really like this because I feel like I think it speaks to maybe a specific person going through something, finally feeling that they got what they deserved. Maybe you could be getting a raise, maybe you are in a lawsuit with a company that didn't do so well with you. And then, you know, I just feel like it's about feeling justified on a financial or professional level. So that's my thought on it. What about you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agreed. I also think this uh card can be a good reminder to give to mutual aid and support nonprofits that you believe in, if you can, if you have the money. Um, especially January, the beginning of the fiscal year, if anyone listening, you know, has a company or you're thinking about what you want to give to this year. This is a popular month to decide where you want to allocate your funds. Um, although we are not a nonprofit. If you want to donate to your favorite podcast, for instance, this might be a good time to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Um activists.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we are activists. Um, speaking of, thank you to everyone who was part of the Santa Jez abundance ritual that um I did for Romanasan podcasts. We raised$569.44. And half of that,$284.72, went to I Romnia, which is a really wonderful nonprofit that we both love a lot, that does amazing things for the Romani community, especially um trafficking survivors, domestic violence survivors, people who really need help and support, LGBTQ plus community.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and the other half went to I was just gonna say, wait, wait. You are doing God's work on God, okay?
SPEAKER_00:I we just love them so much. They're so good. And and then the other half went to us uh to keep the podcast going because we pay for it out of our pockets because we love doing it, and our editors deserve to be paid because we don't know how to edit. So, anyway, the justice card can be about using your money for just causes, as well as what you're talking about with getting your just dessert or what you've what you deserve or what you've earned. And you might also think about this year if you're thinking about how you want to show up in the world with your career or with your money. What does it mean for you to do good in the world? What does it mean for your work to do good and be meaningful? Do you want to do more charity work personally? Do you want to donate your time if you can't donate your money? It's definitely like new year, new me, what good can I do? Kind of energy.
SPEAKER_01:For sure. And yeah, I like what you said about just causes. Like that's the real message, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then the stars are overall guidance. What are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER_01:I love having the star as the guidance card for literally the first guidance card of the new year because it's so full of hope, and the star is representing it's bigger than you, it's in the stars, it's not something that you can even comprehend. Don't even try to wrap your head around it or make it make sense because it won't. The star is about it being beyond what you know, so there's that, and trusting the universe, trusting everything that there is to come as long as you continue doing things with intention. I always felt that way, but for guidance specifically, like that's insane. Like, it's really nice, you know. The the stars are also about finding a balance with one foot in water, one foot on land. It's about having the balance of your feet, you know, centered and to the center of the earth, and then having your head in the clouds, having an equal little uh give and take. So, yeah, what do you think?
SPEAKER_00:I love your take so much. I I love the idea that it's bigger than us, it's bigger than we can even comprehend. I think that's the right kind of energy to have when you're feeling hopeful about possibility, is that you can believe all your dreams, but also believe more than that. And the star feels like that advice that I like to give from time to time when it comes up, uh, when this card comes up. Act as though you know you're going to succeed. Like, how would it, how would your behavior or your decisions or your actions be different if you knew that you were going to succeed in what you do? And it's so important to act that way because it's not about being reckless with money or anything. Sometimes it's just about getting started with something that matters to you. You don't have to spend a lot of money to act on your dreams. And the idea is that it's important for you to believe in yourself this year. And people will set New Year's resolutions, and often by the third week of January, people start to give up on them because of all these reasons. Like we get tired. Sometimes the resolutions that people set are not even necessarily aligned. Like losing weight is still one of the most popular New Year's resolutions. It's like, is that really what you want to do? Or do you want to just like be happy or healthy? You know, it doesn't have to be like a number on the scale, it doesn't have to be anything that diminishes you or restricts you. This is a good time for you to just believe in yourself, do things that feel really good, and trust that it's going to take you somewhere. Also, um, with my new podcast, he's knocking over books. Um, with my new podcast, Immaterial World, uh, Jess Richards and I are doing a ritual at 8 p.m. on January 18th to harness the new year energy and get you back on track if you've been drifting a little bit. So you can sign up for that and my on my website, jasminavontila.com or visit immaterial world immaterial dash world.com.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I love that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it'll be really fun. We're gonna have astrologer Valerie Mesa. There'll be like tarot readings and astrology readings, so you can plan how to best use transits coming up. There'll be a meditation, it's just like get you excited about the new year. But yeah, it's gonna be charming. And I'll be over Zoom, there'll be a replay. Yeah, so I mean the stars like get excited, baby, go do it. You can put your faith in something, put your faith in yourself, make it happen.
SPEAKER_01:Yay! That's it. Happy New Year's. We love you guys.
SPEAKER_00:We love you too. And if you want to donate to Ramanasan, if you didn't get in on sanding's, you can still donate in our coffee. It's K-O-F-I backslash Ramanasan. It's great. I think there's a dot com there. It's in our it's in the show notes. You can find it there and on our website. Um, because yeah, we always we always need donations. Um, but happy new year's. We love you, thank you. Bye, bye.