MARINA & HER VARDO

Marina is a Shuv’hani/psychic and is practiced in the ways of Old World Fortune Telling, reviving the charm and allure of the gypsy traditions.  Her Moldavian heritage brings a “knowing” of not only past, present and prognostics, but of timeless remedies, that work hand in hand with our natural universe. She believes that the simplest, mundane objects can be charmed into changing your world. She considers herself equally blessed for her connection to those souls without a voice. Marina brings with her a Vardo wagon full of ancestral influence. Honoring both her and her husband’s heritage, she engages generations to develop a richness to her readings.

“Many psychics/mediums/seers have that moment of ‘knowing’ that we always remember. It is branded into our minds with little hope of ever forgetting. Sometimes it comes in subtly with quiet secrets. Sometimes it roars in, raw and boisterous. Often it happens in an age of innocence, when we are less directed by social protocol and wild in our souls yet, still barefoot and believing.

My own came when I was just four. I had been born to older parents, assuring that three fourths of my grandparents had passed before I came into the family. Late one evening I slipped out of bed and made my way to where the rest of the family had congregated in the kitchen. Just as I stopped in the doorway I saw a sorrowful old man walk toward me, and then… through me.  I could feel the suddenness of his contact and the pull of him passing through and out.  My mother must have heard something because she came to me and asked what was wrong. I don’t remember fear or confusion, just a knowing. I told her that grandpapa had just walked through me.

At no point in my upbringing did we have family photos decorating the house. What photos we did have were in boxes and not meant for children to play with. No one ever pointed and said, “This is your grandpapa”. And no one had ever given detailed information on his life or his death. I can’t say that, at that age, I was even aware that he had ever existed. I had never seen an image of my maternal grandfather, but I knew him for who he was and what he was missing. I asked my mother why he only had one hand. Even at that age, I knew I had said something that shocked and disturbed her.

It was many years later that she reminded me of the event and told me that her father had lost his hand in a farming accident. He had been the sole provider for 18 children and sharecropping was his only means of supporting them. She then showed me pictures and in each one of them my grandmother had her hand resting over his wrist so that no one looking would know that he was less than a whole man.
And so it began.”

Today Marina and her husband, Blue, travel in the Vardo, moving across the country, jallin’ a drom, bringing the spirit of old world travel and fortune telling in new and enchanting ways!