Chat #20 - Paulina Stevens & Jezmina Von Thiele
"We have the Fool’s journey behind us, and we’re ready to level up"
This interview is free to read. Paid subscriptions support artist honoraria.
Rooted in a Muchwaya Romani heritage of fortune-telling and healing, Paulina (she/her) has blended ancestral wisdom with modern holistic practices. Her expertise in tarot, palmistry, and energy healing forms the foundation of her comprehensive wellness coaching. Paulina serves clients globally, offering personalized guidance incorporating spirituality, herbalism, and fortune-telling online, and at her California-based private practice, Romani Holistic. Paulina is the subject of the L.A. Times podcast Foretold. The podcast follows Paulina as she navigates the consequences of her decision to leave her arranged marriage, and community, to redefine her identity. She is the cohost of Romanistan, a podcast that educates, empowers, and celebrates Romani culture, outcasts, rebels, and revolutionaries. She is also the coauthor of Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling. Paulina is based in California.
Jezmina Von Thiele (they/she) is a writer, performer, and spiritual practitioner whose work draws from their mixed Sinti-Romani heritage. Their award-winning poetry, fiction, and nonfiction has appeared in anthologies and literary journals. Jezmina speaks at events and leads workshops and rituals on divination, spiritual wellness, and creative practice across the country, and offers tarot, palm, and tea leaf readings. They are the co-author of Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling and the co-host of the podcasts Romanistan and Immaterial World. Visit jezminavonthiele.com
14/12/2025, 15:01 - Finbarre:
Welcome one, welcome all to the last recording of Tarot DMs for 2025. This one’s going to be a little different in that normally we would have one creative talking about their practice, their projects, what’s been happening recently and maybe sharing a couple of pictures of pets, but this time we have two! So I’m going to introduce Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens. Hello.
14/12/2025, 15:02 - Paulina Stevens:
Thank you so much for having us and we are happy to be here.
14/12/2025, 15:02 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Yeah, thank you. We’re so excited. This is such a cool thing that we’re doing.
14/12/2025, 15:03 - Finbarre:
Thank you so much. I’m talking to you from Beeston, just outside of Nottinghamshire. So obviously the place famous for Robin Hood and the cheese riots that occurred here quite some time ago. Tell me, whereabouts are you in the world?
14/12/2025, 15:03 - Paulina Stevens:
I am located in California, USA.
14/12/2025, 15:04 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Yeah, I am in New Hampshire. It’s in the northeast of the US. It is very snowy and very, very cold, whereas Paulina is in a very sunny, warm place.
14/12/2025, 15:04 - Paulina Stevens:
It’s a little cloudy today though.
14/12/2025, 15:05 - Paulina Stevens: lol
14/12/2025, 15:05 - Jezmina Von Thiele: Gotta have balance in the universe lol
14/12/2025, 15:07 - Finbarre: For me I have to dress up in a parka and wrap a scarf around myself like some kind of arctic ninja! As this format is a little different today, I’m going to bring the first card in and then we can discover more about you from there. The first, the Anchor card that all guests this month receive is....
14/12/2025, 15:07 - Finbarre:
14/12/2025, 15:07 - Finbarre: On a fancy handpainted plate no less which *flips* is from far flung Greece
14/12/2025, 15:08 - Finbarre: What vibes do you get from the card so far? It’s from Christina Ricci’s Cat Full Of Spiders Tarot
14/12/2025, 15:08 - Finbarre: (You are 100% allowed to utterly hate it)
14/12/2025, 15:08 - Paulina Stevens:
I feel like the World represents breaking old cycles and patterns, even if it doesn’t feel a part of the norm. As long as you’re being authentic to yourself, things will work out the way that they need to. And I also feel like it’s about breaking out of your comfort zone in general.
14/12/2025, 15:09 - Paulina Stevens:
And we love Christina Ritchie.
14/12/2025, 15:10 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Oh my God, do we ever love Christina Ricci. Cat Full of Spiders. I didn’t even know this deck existed. I love the energy. I love the plate. And I feel like this feels really good for the end of the calendar year too.
I love her haunting little face encouraging us to, like Paulina was saying, break out of old patterns and trust that moving forward into the unknown is the right thing and that we’re ready. We have all the experience of the fool’s journey behind us and we’re ready to level up, which I think it’s always a good thing to think about for the new year.
I know that I’m definitely in this mindset where I’m thinking about what I’m ready to release as far as self-imposed restrictions and how I need to see bigger opportunities for myself. So I hope that, I hope this energy feels good for everyone, whether or not they’re connecting with the image.
14/12/2025, 15:12 - Finbarre:
Those are exquisite interpretations of this card. I love it when I hear slightly different interpretations of any given major arcana from anybody else. Which every time I now see that card, I’ll be hearing both of your voices.
So my question for you both is which part of your journey has come full circle this year in a way that has either surprised or humbled you?
14/12/2025, 15:16 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
What a cool question. I know that Paulina and I have a lot that we collaborate on. So there’s always a part of me that wants to answer for both of us, but also she’s on her own train too. But I feel like for the work that we do together, we are branching into the deeper and next iteration of what we want to do.
We have some exciting projects on the horizon. After our book, Secrets of Romani Fortune-Telling, we always imagined we would do more within the realm of divination and write more. We have a tarot deck in the works, a book on tarot in the works, and then a few other things that we can’t really speak on yet.
But I am very humbled by the way that we keep being invited to do more and say more about the things that we care so much about and giving cultural context and Romani history to what we’re doing.
It’s always really intimidating and scary to try to speak for your culture, and that’s particularly hard for a culture as varied and diverse as Roma. Just for anyone who might not know, Roma are a diet sport ethnic group originally from India, but a long time ago.
In the U.S., we tend not to think of the word gypsy as the correct term, although I know in the U.K., and we both love and respect to that in the U.K., it’s used a lot more neutrally. People don’t have so many, I guess, difficult associations with it. In the U.S., it tends to more only be used to conjure stereotypes, so we always kind of prefer Roma in the U.S., but however Roma want to identify anywhere is always fine with us.
It’s more about we’re encouraging non-Romani people not to appropriate the word. But I’ll just say it’s such an honor to be doing more of this work, to try to represent the Romani relationship to fortune-telling and try to accurately represent that as well, because there are so many inaccurate representations.
But for me, personally, I really feel like I am coming full circle on knowing who I am and what I want, which is such a vague statement, but it feels so true in all areas of my life.
I’m moving toward 40, and it’s really making me think what I wanted when I was 30. In some ways, it still feels true, but I am a totally different person now, and I really appreciate and respect that we change as we age, and that’s a vague statement.
14/12/2025, 15:20 - Paulina Stevens:
Oh yeah, I was definitely going to say the same thing in the fact that we keep getting opportunities and sometimes we question it.
Like, are we doing the right thing? Are we on the right path? And I feel like the universe just keeps giving us signs over and over.
And now, yeah, like we have these great projects that we’re working on.
I also feel like it’s even more than that. I feel that just this past year I have, I guess, found my purpose to a degree with talking about our community and social injustices and just other things that are going on, whether they’re small, like fashion, bigger, like politics.
I also feel like when it comes to more personal things that are going on, I have a better sense of myself and not really being afraid of being judged. I don’t really, I don’t know how to explain it. I guess I don’t really care that much about what other people are thinking.
I just hope that I can kind of complete my purpose and represent our community and talk about the things that matter.
14/12/2025, 15:22 - Jezmina Von Thiele: We’re feeling so aligned 💫
14/12/2025, 15:23 - Finbarre:
You are also an uncanny mind reader because I was just composing a follow-up in my head, and that was that you sound so wonderfully aligned where you both are now, like spiritual dancing partners in perfect step.
So I’d love to know, from where you are now to where you started, how did you both meet?
14/12/2025, 15:24 - Jezmina Von Thiele: I love when Paulina tells the first half of the story and then I pick up 😹
14/12/2025, 15:26 - Paulina Stevens:
Okay, so yeah, interesting story. I kind of grew up in a very conservative, very closed Romani community near Los Angeles, kind of right outside of Los Angeles in a place, Orange County.
I basically just felt like that life was not aligning with me. I felt like I needed to talk about it because once I left, other people were just communicating things like, yeah, like there’s a whole world out there and people need to know that and, you know, thank you.
And I didn’t really know how to talk about it or even how to get it started. I was like, maybe we need to do like a podcast or something. And I had actually watched one of Jez’s videos on YouTube, just educating people about Roma in general.
We didn’t really even know what we wanted to do yet. But I remember I think I emailed Jez and then we spoke and Jez was like, no, it’s not me. I’m not the one… and you can take it from here.
14/12/2025, 15:29 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
So, yes, I was very in my head about the idea of me being a mixed Romani person who grew up like fairly assimilated, you know, representing Roma in any way and publicly, which I had already been doing through some writing.
And also my mother had just passed away. I was so sick with long haul COVID and I have all these other autoimmune issues that it triggered.
And I was just like, oh, man, I don’t think I’m the one, you know, I was just feeling so low. The more I talked to friends who I thought would be really good for co-hosting with Paulina, asking them if they wanted to do it, the more they were like, girl, just do it. Honey, just do it. And I was thinking about it and I realized, you know, I can just represent who I am as a mixed and assimilated Romani person.
Like I have an identity that other people share or can relate to. And actually, maybe this would make the work a lot more interesting.
For us to be representing both types of experiences because there are innumerable experiences anyone can have being Romani.
So we are nice little symbiotic partners to each other. And even though we did have very different upbringings in many ways, there are so many things about our upbringing that were almost exactly the same and so many experiences that we share.
And it’s been so much fun doing this work together now for four years. So our podcast birthday is February 14th and we started in 2021.
Actually, we’re coming up on five years, I think. So yeah, wonderful. It’s been so wonderful and it’s led to so many opportunities and projects and it’s become even more than we imagined it would be. We were hoping to archive and celebrate Romani stories and have this be like our love letter to the culture. But it’s been something that allows us to explore our expertise and what we want to do in media in a lot of different ways.
Cultural consulting and article writing, book writing, you know, contributing to poetry anthologies, hosting a festival of the arts, LGBTQ+ Romani festival that we had. It’s just really wonderful, creative things we do together now.
14/12/2025, 15:30 - Jezmina Von Thiele: Our podcast is called Romanistan and is available on all podcast platforms, and I have a second podcast with Jessica Richards called Immaterial World 💖
14/12/2025, 15:31 - Finbarre: I’m stricken with Long Covid too, have been since 2020 and it SUCKS! Double-thank you for using your energy here with me today! Could you pop an example link in the chat for Romanistan and Immaterial World below just so I have the right ones locked in
14/12/2025, 15:32 - Finbarre: Is... this one of the parts of LC, we turn spookier and make podcasts? If so I’ll share the Nobel Prize money don’t worry!
14/12/2025, 15:33 - Jezmina Von Thiele: Absolutely it transforms us!
14/12/2025, 15:33 - Finbarre: Perfect! Now for the second card. The WILD one which could frankly be any of 77. Who is going to pick?
14/12/2025, 15:34 - Jezmina Von Thiele: Ooh Paulina do you want to pick?
14/12/2025, 15:35 - Paulina Stevens:
Okay, I pulled out the Page of Cups.
14/12/2025, 15:36 - Finbarre:
14/12/2025, 15:37 - Jezmina Von Thiele: I’m 💀
14/12/2025, 15:38 - Finbarre:
Oh, poor little Christina there. She looks so dejected. Of course, this is the card of emotional openness, of creative beginnings, of often unexpected inspiration when you pause to take that moment to listen to a surprising message from the subconscious.
14/12/2025, 15:38 - Finbarre: Or she looks like my daughter on the camping trip when we realised the snacks are still in the kitchen at home
14/12/2025, 15:39 - Finbarre:
Right, next question for you both, this one being from the Page of Cups.
Tell me about something from your intuition recently that surprised you.
14/12/2025, 15:41 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Yeah, I think we were talking about this card fairly recently. So on Romanistan, we do interviews with Romani people doing amazing things of all different kinds of backgrounds. We were talking to Azul DelGrasso on the episode I posted in the chat about psychedelic healing. But then, you know, we might be talking to a poet in translation, Diana Norma Szokolyai for the next one. But we also do weekly tarot readings for the week ahead.
And I feel like we were getting the Page quite a lot. And I love what you’re saying about creative inspiration and emotional openness. This one, we were often talking about inner child healing as an element of it and experimentation. Yesterday, it was chafing me through client readings. And I love how cards can mean one thing for one client, another for another. And so much of this was encouraging people to be open and experiment.
And also to check in a lot with how they’re feeling almost like they’re a little toddler themselves. If they’re feeling big feelings, you know, if you’re feeling big feelings as an adult, it might be helpful for you to check in like you do with a little kid. Like, okay, honey, what’s going on? What do you need? Are we hungry? Or are we upset about this? Do we need to talk to a friend? Or what do we need?
And so there’s a kind of emotional check-in that I like to do with the Page and a reminder that our inner child, you know, inside all of us is still requiring nurturing and reassurance. And that as adults, we get to provide what we maybe didn’t always get as kids because we can’t always provide everything we want for our children because the world is complicated.
But we get to do that for ourselves as adults.
And sometimes also the Page can represent, you know, in some love questions that were coming up yesterday for clients, emotional immaturity sometimes.
And that might be something you can grow with.
It might be something you can’t grow with.
But I think that there are so many sides to every card, and I always really appreciate that.
And I also absolutely love the reference in this card for Christina Ricci. This looks like when she’s swimming in the second Addams Family, Addams Family Values in the iconic camp scenes.
So I absolutely love the Addams Family and Morticia and Gomez are my romance goals. I’ll take a Gomez of any gender, really.
14/12/2025, 15:43 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Something about my intuition recently that surprised me. I mean, I feel like everything surprises me sometimes. But I was working with a client recently who was saying that no medium could contact her sister, but she wanted to try and see if her sister would come through for me. And sometimes when clients say like, I’ve been able to do it, can you do it?
There’s a lot of pressure and there’s a tendency to want to shut down for me. But I was open to it. And what ended up happening is that her sister came through and made it really clear that she didn’t really want to come through for mediums. And so she didn’t reveal a lot about herself other than she really just wanted to talk to her sister directly. And so the whole session ended up being about me kind of coaching her how to connect with her sister and trust her intuition, which was really beautiful. And Paulina and I talk about this in our book, Secrets of Romani Fortune-Telling. You know, everyone has access to their intuition and a good reading should help you feel empowered, not dependent of not even a reader, but empowered by the experience that you share. And this made me really happy because I didn’t shut down. I didn’t get in my head about it. I just shared what came through and that ended up being the right thing to share.
14/12/2025, 15:45 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
This is our book that’s currently out, a how to for tarot, palmistry, tea leaf reading + more plus the cultural and historical context of fortune telling as a Romani survival trade.
14/12/2025, 15:46 - Finbarre: Why would you do this to me, my bookcase is creaking already and you present me with this beautiful possibility? This looks not only stunning but the perfect gift for my mum’s birthday too
14/12/2025, 15:46 - Paulina Stevens:
I really love that. I feel like when situations like that happen, it kind of gives us a little jolt of like, oh, we’re doing the right thing or like we’re helping people in the right way. I would say that for me, my intuition, I think, has really surprised me so much because just like anybody, I have doubts of just regular signs or things like that. And at the very same time, I do have so much trust in my faith of just, you know, universal energy. And I have been feeling very spiritually in tune in the way that timing has been very perfect. Timing for everything, even when things happen by surprise and like, oh, like this horrible thing happened or this horrible thing happened. I’m really starting to see the purpose in it and not in a way of like, well, everything happens for a reason. But like, I do trust the universe in that sense. Even some of the worst things are just kind of this combination of, I think, getting us ready to really be spiritually in tune and connect with all people. And I almost feel like we’re connected. We’re all kind of connected at the core. And so, yeah, I don’t know. I just think my intuition has surprised me because it’s just getting stronger in general, I think.
14/12/2025, 15:46 - Finbarre:
One of the problems we’re speaking to fascinating people is that time flits away so quickly. And I realize that I should bring in the third card here.
Now, this is from Jennifer McGrew, who is a costume and production designer who has worked on ballets and B-movies. And she, through her life, has been carrying one card.
You’ll be able to tell this from the picture because this card looks like exactly what it is.
It is ruined.
And it is, of course, The Tower.
14/12/2025, 15:47 - Finbarre:
The exact card that has been following her through her life and now it is yours
14/12/2025, 15:49 - Finbarre:
A difficult card, but a rewarding one.
My question for the last tarot card for this interview is, has there been a moment in 2025 where everything fell apart, but something better emerged?
14/12/2025, 15:51 - Paulina Stevens:
I think a lot of things fell apart. I would say just certain situations like, I would say, living situations and work situations and jobs and opportunities, like many things would fall apart, I would say, towards the beginning of the year.
And somehow now everything is at a full circle. The opportunities are showing up and I ended up finding an amazing, an amazing place. And maybe the timing isn’t perfect, but I feel like in some weird way, I think it is.
14/12/2025, 15:52 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
h, that’s such a good question. You know, I feel like I’m still emerging. So much fell apart in 2025 for me in my personal life, and not in any deeply egregious way, in the normal way of people growing apart or having realizations about what someone wants and what someone doesn’t want.
And so relationally, a lot of my relationships are changing or evolving, and my vision for my future, what my future would look like in my personal life also changed tremendously. And while that is always painful to go through loss or experience different types of grief, I think that I’m still figuring out what it all means for me in the big picture.
But I am really relieved to have clarity and to be about what isn’t working and to have clarity about what isn’t my path, because I value honesty and clarity more than I value my personal comfort and security.
And I think that the Tower is such a good teacher for this, where sometimes things are falling apart for a reason, and you have to let them, and you have to fall with it. And the more that you are consciously falling, the more that you allow your body to relax through it, the less likely you are to get hurt and be able to actually process the experience.
And so sometimes falling without resistance is the healthiest, wisest thing we can do. I still feel like I’m falling into 2025. But at the same time, all of these other wonderful things are happening, especially with work and my collaborations with Paulina. And, you know, our podcasts, our books, our speaking engagements, all these cool things are happening. And so I feel like I am building a net that I am falling into. And the rest of it will make sense later.
14/12/2025, 15:52 - Paulina Stevens:
I do have to get going now, but I really, really appreciate you having us on here. And these were amazing questions. Very interesting. I was able to kind of pick my brain.
And I would also say I forgot, but the Tower card is something that I have been pulling up. I feel like it’s an overall representation of just these old illusions also falling apart and now being able to build things on real truth, I guess, authenticity.
So, yeah. But thank you so much. Thank you for having me!
14/12/2025, 15:53 - Jezmina Von Thiele: Thank you!!
14/12/2025, 15:54 - Jezmina Von Thiele: Bye Paulina! xoxo
14/12/2025, 15:54 - Finbarre: You are a superstar Paulina, thank you for talking to this random guy from Britain!
14/12/2025, 15:56 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Also here’s a picture of my dog Lily for anyone who needs her
14/12/2025, 15:58 - Finbarre:
Lily is beautiful and she’s looking at you as if to say, why would you disturb my sleep? So that is a very well behaved, very well understanding, but also slightly dozy hound.
Yeah. Send her a scritch from me. Yeah. The question I have to ask about the guest card for 2020. How are we almost in 2026? It’s like living in the future or it will be.
We’ll need to pick the first card that my first guest will receive from you and I’ll name you as well. And you get to pick. So with power was a great power comes great responsibility. Let’s say from Spider-Man. If you have a deck nearby, I’d like you to shuffle it, draw one, place it down and take a picture of it. And that’s the picture that I’ll hand on to the person for the future.
14/12/2025, 16:00 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
14/12/2025, 16:01 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Lily loves being a chaos goblin. And so she really appreciates that you see her as well behaved because you might be the only one. But we have the Judgment card for 2026. How exciting. How intense.
14/12/2025, 16:01 - Finbarre: JUDGEMENT?
14/12/2025, 16:01 - Finbarre: What a start
14/12/2025, 16:01 - Jezmina Von Thiele: 🔥
14/12/2025, 16:02 - Finbarre:
Wow, it could have been worse. And let’s face it, who doesn’t want to start the year with better wisdom and sense of purpose?
14/12/2025, 16:03 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Yeah, sometimes we need the Judgment card. And I feel like it fits so well with what Paulina was saying about having clarity about who she is and caring a lot less about what other people think of her and just being brutally and beautifully authentic. But I do love that we’re being asked to rise up from the dead, which feels so appropriate this time of year.
14/12/2025, 16:04 - Finbarre:
Beigli sends festive wishes to your faithful four legged friend
14/12/2025, 16:05 - Jezmina Von Thiele: Omg 😻
14/12/2025, 16:05 - Jezmina Von Thiele: So precious! Lily loves cats
14/12/2025, 16:06 - Finbarre:
You know how some cats are predatory felines? They’re just one whisker away from being feral monstrosities, murder machines. Beigli’s the opposite. He will just snooze and cuddle. Those are pretty much his two modes.
Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens. I want to say thank you so much for being on Tarot DMs, especially when everything must be so busy this time of year. I will be looking to get myself a copy of Secrets of Romani Fortune-Telling Myself from all good bookshops. I’d like to say have a wonderful Christmas, winter celebration, whatever it is you get up to, and a fabulous new year.
14/12/2025, 16:08 - Jezmina Von Thiele:
Thank you so much for having us. This was so much fun. I know Paulina loved it too, because we share a brain, but happy seasonal greetings to everyone doing wonderful things. What a delight. We love what you’re doing and happy 2026. Yay!
14/12/2025, 16:12 - Jezmina Von Thiele: This was so cool! Thank you so much!