Welcome!! I’m Seder 🙂 Today we’re gonna go over my villain backstory a little bit. I own a metaphysical shop called Mystical Thoughts based out of Springfield, Missouri. Right now I mainly do retail, but in the past, I’ve read Tarot professionally and attended hundreds of pop-up markets and events for my shop! I work intuitively with crystal energy. I also dabble a little bit in Reiki, but it’s not something I’ve really progressed in very far. Matching people with the right stone when they come into my store is probably my all time favorite part of this work.
My shop is set up almost like a witchy thrift store; lots of the items (and all of the crystals) are secondhand! I also have different types of readers in every day, and take local art on consignment. I have a huge apothecary cabinet that’s set up in an old hutch. I literally manifested this hutch at the perfect time, too. It’s absolutely beautiful. When you walk into the store and you walk into the back, you’ll see it. It’s full of my Dollar Apothecary and chime candles. It definitely matches the vibe for the rest of my shop.
When you walk in, all the crystals in the front room are secondhand, which is very important to me. I try to source everything as sustainably as possible. Some people think that you can’t have sustainability and affordability at once, but I think I’ve managed to bridge that gap pretty well by doing the secondhand crystals. They’re all cleansed really really well, of course. Every item that comes into my shop is going to sit over a selenite and clear quartz grid with a little bit of natural tobacco: that’s going to cleanse any negative energy, and really just give the item a reset back to neutral (hopefully).
I have had a few items that have either been taken to my personal home to be disposed of, or I buried them because I couldn’t get rid of that energy completely. I am Reiki I attuned in order to cleanse items more effectively as well. Once I realized that a huge part of my everyday work was cleansing, I learned Reiki so that I could cleanse and infuse crystals with Reiki.
Everything also gets a smoke cleanse before it gets put out on the floor as well, because with secondhand stuff can never be too careful. You never know what it was used for, especially metaphysical items, spiritual tools, etc.
Another big part of my store that I really love is the library. It’s free for anyone to use. You just have to create an account at the front desk. We have so many books… I think we just hit 550 books in the library. They’re all on metaphysical topics. There’s a massive crystal section, astrology, hypnotism, ESP, Reiki books, and way more. There’s a few Reiki handbooks too, so if you’re not able to afford a full on attunement right now, but you’re still curious, you can still come check out some information on Reiki absolutely free.
I have a huge thrifted section at the shop too. I basically live in the thrift stores and every once in a while I see a witchy item that is not being appreciated the way that it should be. And it feels like a little rescue mission sometimes. I think everything in my store is a fair price, especially the thrifted items, mostly just because it’s coming from a mindset of, “let’s save this from possible landfill and give it to another witchy person.” My store is a lot of matchmaking. It’s very romantic, very cute. Sometimes people walk in and an item that I have in the store will just pop out in my brain and I’m like, “you definitely belong to this person!!!” I’m going to give it to them for like 50 % off, or free, or whatever I can afford to do at the time. That’s one reason why I love my work: It’s a big matchmaking love affair. Makes me very happy.
I am definitely not an expert on everything that I carry, but I try to have a pretty diverse array of objects.
One thing that’s important to me, too, in the library and in the books that I sell, is I try not to censor the information. There’s a lot of information out there that I would consider problematic in the spiritual community, but if those books are donated to my shop, I’m still probably going to end up putting them out on the shelf. You never really know why someone is reading those books. It could be out of morbid curiosity. It could be just to see how other people think. So I try not to censor information… Now, obviously, if there’s like straight up how to be a N–i book, I’m not gonna put those out on my shelf. However, I definitely have some books on what I would consider to be “dark magic”, something I would never dabble in. But I have it out for informational purposes. And I let everybody know when they check them out: I don’t personally agree with what these books say. Be sure to check everything against your own inner guidance
How did you take the steps to get here? What brought you here? ⁓
Well, that’s stemming very far back… I grew up in a very religious household, church three times a week, very strict, very legalistic Christianity. It was just very rigid. I always felt like we’re all just putting our heads down and forcing ourselves to believe this strict religion when in reality, in our core, we know it’s not our truth and that doesn’t align with what we believe in. And then when I found out… no, most people that are strict Christians; they do believe all of this, they do actually believe this. I just, I couldn’t stick with it anymore. I was probably 15 years old when I was done with Western Evangelical Christianity as a whole. And when I say strict legalistic Christianity, I mean actual literal cult.
My parents were raised in a cult. I was raised cult adjacent, I would say. My parents, while they were no longer active members of the cult when I was growing up, were teaching from the tool-set that they were given by this religious cult. It’s called IBLP if you want to go on a deep dive. There’s even a documentary about it called “Shiny Happy People” Very interesting stuff. I’ll save that for a later post.
I left my parents house as soon as I turned 17 and they legally couldn’t stop me from moving out. I was very lost, had no idea what the hell was going on, and I was just really, really searching for purpose. And for a while there, I was just hitting rock bottom over and over again until I dropped out of college, did the whole party thing for a little while, until I broke through that rock bottom to another rock bottom and got an Autism / ADHD diagnosis.
My whole entire worldview changed in a very short, emotional period. I was starting to see that I’m not this broken shell of a human being. I’m a perfectly fine human being. I’m just different than most of the people that I was interacting with at the time. That was a very healing experience for me. It was also a very hard time, breaking me down to my core. But when I got that diagnosis, I realized that my entire world was a lie. The whole world that I’ve built for myself was based on this flawed understanding of myself. That period of my life just felt like the rug had been ripped out from under my feet.
With all that change happening in my physical reality, my spiritual reality was in a similar upheaval. And it just caused me to go through this phase of really examining myself and digging deep into what I believed. I came out the other side of this dark night of the soul, I guess is what you’d call it, realizing that I had no idea who I was, what I wanted, what I was gonna do, but I was going to start with treating myself kindly, and working on my relationship with myself. That led me down just a path of starting to care for myself a little bit better. I realized I needed a hobby.
I went to my sister and said, “hey, I think we should start a little business. I’m gonna make jewelry and you should do your little spiritual stuff (at the time I was not a believer) and we can make a little business out of it, cause I know that you witches love crystals!!”
I genuinely just wanted a hobby to keep my hands busy, but when I started working with crystals, I realized, my gosh, these stones have energy! I can feel that energy, and I can USE that energy to make myself feel better! It was lighting something up in me that I didn’t realize could be lit up. I feel something around these stones. So, I started researching more about crystals and I started realizing: crystals are my THING!! Luckily, I stumbled upon it through jewelry making.
I started researching and becoming a student of everything I possibly could. During this, my sister introduced me to a podcast called Spiritual Shit by Alea Lovely. (Go listen to that podcast!!! I fucking love her) That podcast introduced me to all these different forms of spirituality, and eventually I ran into a concept called the Law of One that changed my entire life. We’ll also be saving that content for a later post because my goodness, I could talk about the Law of One for years. Diving deep into TLO1 opened my eyes to this whole other world that I never could have imagined and it just felt right. It felt very much like I had come home.
After all this, I realized: I have no other choice now than to develop more spiritually, if I can. I started focusing on my spiritual journey, eventually took the business on full time by myself and started digging deep into this crystal energy. I love helping people find the crystals that they can use to heal their own energy. Helping match people with the right crystal really lights me up. I started doing pop-up events more often with my jewelry and crystals, and then through those pop-ups, I eventually gained enough traction to open up the retail space that I have now.
I just opened on April Fool’s Day, 2024. I started the Fool’s Journey with Mystical Thoughts. It felt like a very natural flow, a very healthy progression of business and personal journey. As my spiritual journey unfolds, the success with my business is also expanding and unfolding. I definitely used the shop as part of my journey to spiritual development. It helped me become who I am today and I’m eternally grateful for that. I view Mystical Thoughts as a separate entity that came in and helped me, even though was (kind of) an entity that I created. I love my shop and I’m very grateful that this is the life that I get to lead now.
The town I live in, while being a really cool hub of spirituality in the Bible Belt, didn’t have many shops like mine. Especially not shops doing things the way we do them here. I have two main pillars of my business: SUSTAINABILITY & AFFORDABILITY…
That’s exactly why I only do secondhand stones right now. I do stock selenite and black tourmaline just because I think those are essentials. I try to keep very good tabs on where the wholesalers getting their materials, how they’re getting them, are they using ethical business, labor, and mining practices, etc. Beyond those 2 staples, everything has been sourced from people downsizing their collections, moving, wanting to trade in their old stones for new (to them) stones, flea markets, thrift stores, and more!!
It’s disheartening when you look around and it seems like the entire crystal community is kind of based on a “don’t ask, don’t think about it” mentality when it comes to sourcing their stones. I think I feel like there are so many people spouting things like, “we love Mother Earth, we love all these things She’s given us and we are spiritual beings… but we’re going to buy our stones from companies using child / slave labor, and unethical mining practices and essentially funding ecological disasters.” It doesn’t make sense to me, and I couldn’t do that in my own business.
In order to be a spiritual being you have to care about the Earth. We have to care about the ethical practices, the ethical sourcing of your stones, and the ecological impact we have on our Earth. It’s so hard to trust crystal businesses when they either don’t know or don’t care what they’re getting their stones from.
There were so many people at these crystal markets and shows that looked like they were just getting all their crystals off Wish or AliExpress. One lady flat out told me she ordered all of her crystals on Temu. She was like, “You can get these huge crystals for like a dollar a piece!!” I’m like, my God, I don’t want them for a dollar a piece!! That just seems so icky to me, what are your motives at that point??
I can’t keep up with their prices, either. If I were to only sell ethically sourced wholesale gems, I could do it, but it would be more expensive. It’s because I’m paying for ethical treatment of the workers, conscientious mine owners, and business practices that aren’t contributing to our current environmental crisis. But I can’t compete when everyone next to me is selling the same stones from Temu and Wish that were probably mined by children. Literal blood diamonds. They’re literally covered in the blood of people that live and work in these mining countries. I can’t get behind it.
So that’s why I’m doing the second hand stones. And that’s why I’ll continue to do second hand stones exclusively until that dries up. And I’m pretty confident that it’s not gonna dry up anytime soon because I’m turning people away at the end of every month going, sorry, I’ve already spent my crystal budget. I’m full, I’m full. I can’t foresee it.
When dealing with secondhand stones and spiritual tools, I think it’s really important to cleanse the space regularly. I take good energetic hygiene measures at the shop. It’s my pride and joy. It smells amazing in there, and it feels so good, I can just feel the good happy vibe. There have been several people that have come in and just been like, “I just had a hard day. I just want to sit here with the crystals for a minute and just chill.” That is absolutely fine. I’m never expecting anyone to buy anything when they come in. If you just want to come chill with the stones, give a piece of selenite a hug, that is totally fine. Absolutely fine. It is actually encouraged. Come hang out with me!!
Where do you plan on taking this? Do you want to stay here or expand?
I’ve been running into this unique phenomenon where I’m trying to manifest things and I’m going, well… what do I want? Because I pretty much have everything that I’ve been trying to manifest. It’s like, well crap, where do I want to go now? I think that’s a beautiful space to be in. I’m very grateful to be in that space. But I really don’t know. I feel like I’m still in this weird middle ground of like, well, okay, so I’ve established the shop. I’m getting everything under control. I just hired two employees, which is absolutely wild to me. If you would have asked me like three months ago what I wanted next, I would have said “EMPLOYEES” and now… here I am!!
I’m signing up for markets as fast as I can. I’ve just been missing the people!! I want to get back into doing pop-ups because I love meeting new people. I do get to meet new, amazing, wonderful people in my store, but usually those are people who came looking for my shop. That’s great, I love everyone who comes looking for my shop, but sometimes it’s really fun to just stumble across people that are like, my God, I had no idea we had a shop like this, where the heck did you come from? And that’s just a really fun experience. It’s a really fun niche little community that shows up for those things.
I do this fall festival event called Cider Days in Springfield. Shout out to Downtown Springfield. I love Cider Days: my first year, I made $4,000, which was four times more than I had ever made at an event. It’s only a two day event!! I was freaking out. The next year I made $8,000, and I used that money to fund the opening of the storefront. Without my local community, I would not have this storefront. Without my immediate local community making me feel so loved, I would have never gotten to where I am today. I’m really grateful for everybody, and just hits me in the feels sometimes. I’ll just sit in the shop getting teary eyed…
I literally wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for this loving community that we have in Springfield. Which is a phenomenon in and of itself: how did Springfield get so cool? What happened? All of a sudden, Springfield’s the coolest place ever? Maybe it’s just that my perspective changed, because I’m sure people would argue with me when I say Springfield’s the coolest place. I’m really digging it. I’m constantly amazed by the wonderful people that we get to meet here, and the amazing spiritual work that’s being done here too. We have an amazing group of spiritual people in Springfield. Oddly enough, our community here is way bigger than most spiritual groups in other towns of this size. Everybody’s connected. It’s very special. We’ve been incredibly lucky to run across this funky little patch of people.
That pretty much sums up everything I felt was important to communicate, come by and see me at the store sometime!! We’re open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 6. It’s called Mystical Thoughts Shop, if you missed that.
I LOVE YOUUUUU!!!!!!
xoxo,
The Mystical Thot ❤
Mystical Thoughts Blog 