Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Moon Cat. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Moon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Thinking about my legacy, I come from a very magical lineage. Both sides of my family tree are filled with witches, psychics, and folks who didn’t believe in either of those things but always seemed to “just know” what was going to happen or who needed help at that moment, and I am blessed to have been born gifted as well. I’ve also been making jewelry and playing with pretty rocks since I was super young, so it really seems like no matter how many different things I’ve gained or lost interest in I always come back to my roots.

I started selling my pieces in my high school art class and on the bus ride to and from school, but I still worked a “regular” job and didn’t really consider myself an artist yet. It was around this time I started developing my psychic abilities and playing with things like tarot cards and herbs. Lots of teenagers find witchy hobbies enticing and I was no different – but I still wasn’t taking myself seriously. Then when I was in my early 20’s I had to quit my retail job because I started getting awful panic attacks. I couldn’t conform to full time employment anymore because of my anxiety, and I needed a way to support myself, so I took a chance on my craft. Finally getting serious about it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

Was it incredible overnight, or even quickly? No. Would I still encourage every creative person I meet to do the same? Yes, and I do every chance I get. When we lean into what feels good and what feels right for us, we create wonderful ripple effects that can manifest amazing things into our lives. I was scared to dive in but not because it wasn’t what I wanted, I just needed to develop that confidence in myself and my skills. I grew up with very traditional parents who wanted me to go to college and get a salaried job like their generation was “supposed” to, and when I started down an alternative path they were very skeptical. My relationships and friendships were affected as well. Lots of times I considered quitting because impostor syndrome reared its ugly head and those mean voices inside me told me I had no business doing what I was doing. But there were also days that I would pull my car up to a show with my low fuel light on, without even enough gas to get home if I didn’t sell anything, and just blindly trusted that I would make enough to fill up my car and buy groceries and get whatever else I needed. And I did, every time. When you bet on yourself you always win.

Now I’m in a much more stable place and incredibly blessed to be able to choose to fill my days with what I love and what serves me because those things also bring me abundance. I am grateful to have freedom with my time and to spend my energy on work that doesn’t feel like work because it’s what I was born to do. If anyone reading this is after the same, my advice to you is just go with your gut. Always go with your gut. Regardless of whether you’re told it’s useless, unimportant, a waste of time (ESPECIALLY if they say it’s a waste of time,) tune it out and do what you love and you will find prosperity in your fulfillment.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I actually started out painting originally, and then moved to jewelry. I’m currently a crystal worker in all forms. I make jewelry infused with crystal energy, meant to manifest magic for anyone who wears it. I offer crystal readings to individuals and do more intensive crystal therapy work with couples, families or larger groups like coworkers or roommates to help them raise the vibration of their home or workplace. Crystal readings are a bit like tarot readings except I use rocks instead of cards! They help to offer clarity on specific issues or offer possible solutions to problems in someone’s life. When I do group work it’s usually centered around assisting folks through situations with big emotions like transitions, whether that transition is good or bad, new jobs, or grief. I’m also called in to check out paranormal situations pretty frequently, especially if someone thinks that an ancestor or loved one is trying to communicate or if they may have a poltergeist! I am clairaudient as well as clairvoyant (and I sometimes get psychic smells…but there isn’t a word for that!) and I use all of these gifts combined with my crystals to do all sorts of energetic healing.

It took time to acknowledge and respect my metaphysical abilities because I didn’t think other people would take it as seriously as the jewelry and art I created, but every piece of jewelry that I made was magically designed to make people feel better anyway. Once I started backing my own work with confidence in all the parts of myself my talents bloomed. The best part was I started hearing back from my customers that what I made worked for them! This world is bustling with creative energy, especially in my city of Austin, Texas, but even though there seems to be an oversaturation of crystal jewelry I believe mine still stands out because it just feels different. When I work with stones, I don’t research what they can do, I allow them to tell me. This method of directly channeling the stones themselves means that they decide a lot of the elements of the design! If I’m in my studio working on a piece of jewelry, sometimes I can actually hear a chiming sound when the piece is finished – even if from a design standpoint I was planning on doing more. When I hear the bells I stop! And those pieces always sell the fastest. I think those are the designs that are guided by something higher to fill an immediate need in someone’s life, and I’m super grateful that I’m able to help other people on their healing journey.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is such a confusing and tricky beast. There are a thousand influencers on any given app trying to tell you how to grow your audience by following this trend or that audio, post this many times per week but only at these specific times of day – it’s all just too much! I grew my followers organically and slowly, and because of this I know most of them are real people who really care about what I’m doing. If I meet people in person, like at an art show, I always make sure they know where they can find me online. I post pretty regularly but I post what I enjoy! I don’t create empty content just to get a few followers and I don’t “follow for follow” or do comment pods for fake engagement from people who are just after more traffic to their own page. My advice to anyone stuck in that under 1K rut is to be consistent with your posts and keep changing it up with the hashtags you use. You don’t have to post every day, but if your normal schedule is to post every 2-3 days make sure you stick to that! Even though I mostly make jewelry and post things related to crystals, I use different sets of hashtags every day to attract new people that may just be scrolling their recommended pages. Sometimes it’s tags related to crystals, sometimes it’s witchy things or mental health topics. All social media is essentially trying to be that clock app now too, so the more you post videos the more people will find you. I know posting lots of videos is intimidating to some people, it was to me at first too, but you don’t have to try super hard to be successful. Take a creative idea you have and run with it, or just do something completely new and weird! You never know what will go viral next.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

Honestly I think they’re horrible. It seems a bit pointless when I see someone post their NFT they just purchased for an outrageous amount of money that anyone can then screenshot and claim to also “own.” It’s nonsense. I also have really strong feelings about anything that isn’t accessible to everyone, and crypto in general definitely seems to be one of those things that is geared towards a very specific group of people while gatekeeping the rest. Hats off to the previously pretty unknown artists that are making lots of money selling NFT’s to the ultra rich, but when that money is gone the greenhouse gas emissions created by those sales will remain. I have read that certain cryptocurrency companies are on record saying solar or hydro power could in theory be used to offset some of the massive amounts of energy needed to keep the blockchain going, but no one actually seems to be taking steps to implement these methods. Considering the fact that it would take planting around 300 million trees to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from just one year of Bitcoin transactions, I think I’ll stay away!

Contact Info:

• Website: modernalchemy.storenvy.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/modernalchemytx
• Facebook: facebook.com/modernalchemytx
• Other: Patreon: patreon.com/modernalchemymagickclub Tiktok: @modernalchemymagickclub

Image Credits
The headshot of me was taken by Amber Canales All other pics taken by me (Moon Cat)