Thee Ninth Keye: A Fairly Comprehensive History
Hello once more, dear readers. I'm very excited to announce that my shop website will be having a grand opening sale October 1st, 2026! Just in time for the holidays. I will post more about the details as it gets closer, but I am thinking of doing a raffle or give-away as well. Stay tuned for that!
Today's entry is going to be a bit different than my usual content. Today I want to speak more about the history of my small business and what led me to making all the recent changes.
I know a handful of my customers have been around since day one and likely know about this timeline of events, but many of you do not! I think the majority of my current customers are from the tail end of my art market vending era and are likely wondering why I am no longer doing art markets. The short answer is, it just wasn't sustainable.
Let me take you back to the beginning. I had been trying to launch a small business from the time I was 16. I started making soap, then moved to trying to resell crystals and art supplies, then eventually I started doing small paintings and wire wrap. I had some mild success online and in person, mostly selling or trading artwork with friends. I wasn't making it big by any means, but I was able to make a few hundred dollars here and there. In 2018, I partnered with a woman on a project we called Mokosh Boone. This project was kind of nebulous and vague. She was the driving force behind it, often talking about lofty plans of providing spiritual services and whatnot… I remember it was supposed to be some sort of metaphysical store situation as well. She was a strange sort and, looking back, I think she wanted to be some kind of Instagram guru type. She was very focused on cultivating that New-Agey aesthetic online. To me it seemed she wanted to be the adored leader of a coven/group, and she wanted to get paid for it. I, being much younger than her and having a low self esteem, went along with it.
She signed us up to vend at a metaphysical fair and I spent many nights preparing and making items to sell. The fair day came and I practically sold out! She convinced me to let her “take care” of the money, claiming that I wasn't trustworthy. Reluctantly (and against my intuition), I agreed and let her take it. She said that she would put it in a joint bank account for us. She lied. We had made close to $1000 in cash alone and she took all of it for reasons I do not know. I never saw a cent of that money after she took it. As a result, the credit cards I had maxed out to buy the supplies for the fair didn't get paid and I foolishly let them go to collections (I was young and didn't know how these things worked). My credit score tanked majorly. Our friendship, unsurprisingly, was severed and I tried to keep vending by myself for a while, but inevitably gave up on running a small business until 2020.
During the pandemic, I was laid off. In order to make money, I did what a lot of people did at that time, and took to doing Door Dash. I found myself waiting in parking lots, bored out of my mind. I took to collecting weird little bits of metal that I would find. I would bring home these metal bits and bobs, clean them up, and wire wrap/glue stones and charms to them to make sculptural ‘jewelry' pieces. I never intended to sell these pieces, but as I would post them on my social media, people would ask me if they were for sale. Eventually, I decided to give selling my art another shot.
April 1st, 2020, I launched my Etsy shop under the name Die Stich Hexe (pronounched: dee stich hexe, meaning “the stitch witch” in German). In hindsight, this is a terrible name choice, as it is in German and I am an American, living in America. No one understood the name. Also, I chose it thinking I would get into embroidery (hence ‘stitch witch') but that never happened. Nonetheless, I saw success immediately! Within 48 hours of my Etsy page going live, I was making sales. I was driving around, hand delivering every package, because I couldn't afford shipping costs at the time.
Eventually, business ramped up and I began vending once again at metaphysical faires. I started posting on TikTok and eventually went what I describe as ‘mini viral', gaining around 40,000 friends/followers between Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram over night. This was honestly one of the worst things I have ever experienced. At first, I was super excited but quickly realized that being a public figure of any sort came with a unique set of challenges. For example, I was unaware, at the time, that responding to trolls makes the situation worse and would respond to every single comment. Next thing I knew, I was being bombarded with hate comments. I even had some weirdos attempt to scare me by doxxing me. I got death threats, I got christians telling me I was going to hell, I had men sending me unsolicited pictures of themselves… I even had people sending me pictures of dead animals that they claimed to have sacrificed, assuming that I do the same thing. I do not do animal sacrifice. One day, in the midst of a complete and total mental breakdown (brought on by the trolls), I completely nuked all ‘Die Stich Hexe' social medias as well as my own personal social media and took a break from it for a long time.
During my time away, I started school and moved in with my current partner. Not long after we moved in, however, I was diagnosed with cancer and had to leave school to receive chemotherapy. Once I was more stable, my partner (Brandon) and I decided to work together on the small business. So, we reopened as Quicksilver Alchemical Arts. Eventually, we ended up dissolving Quicksilver due to creative differences and thus Thee Ninth Keye was born from those ashes. He and I had two very different ideas of what we wanted to do with the business and, to save our relationship, we decided to do our own things. I do not recommend becoming business partners with your life partner, especially when you’ve just moved in together! Now we help each other out with projects but Thee Ninth Keye is entirely my own endeavor.
Eventually, I went back to school. Occasionally I would still try to vend in the summer time or on the weekends when I didn't have class. I was so stressed out, stretched thin, and my work was suffering, both my class work and my art. That brings us to earlier this year.
January of 2026, I found myself very suddenly and severely ill. After a trip to the ER, it was discovered that the cancer had not only returned, but spread. It was described as having “infiltrated” my liver. From January until about the end of March I was pretty much on death's doorstep. I have never been that close to dying. It was terrifying and disheartening. Once again, I found myself having to leave college. I felt so hopeless and depressed. Naturally, I turned to my spiritual path for comfort and guidance.
Once again, I found myself trying to restart my small business selling prints of my artwork as well as painted boxes. However this time felt shallow and stupid. I realized I had ruined painting for myself (temporarily). I was no longer capable of making art for the love of it, I had conditioned my brain to only see my art as being for other people, to market and to sell. The final straw was when I had to move out of my school studio space and in the process all of my current projects broke, fell apart, or became ruined. It was so gut wrenching. Admittedly, I often contemplated just giving up and letting the cancer take me at that point. The Gods, however, had some other plans for me.
Alone, isolated, and at rock bottom, I threw myself into personal study. I felt like my faith had been shaken by this sudden re-occurrence of my old foe. I had questions that needed answers. I had outgrown a lot of my old beliefs and ways of doing things. As time passed and I prioritized my health and stability, my will to live came back. Newly encouraged by Jack Grayle’s PGM Praxis course, I decided that I would revisit old hobbies and interests as a way of returning to myself. College had left me as a raw nerve, unable to just exist peacefully without anxiety, and I knew I needed to fix that. One such hobby that has never failed to give me peace of mind was working with plants.
Interestingly, I would start on a new medication that would increase my sensitivity to smells to an astounding degree. I realized, as I was burning more incense during my work with the PGM, that my favorite incense sticks all suddenly smelled completely different. Upon further research, I discovered that the majority of incense on the Western market is actually quite toxic and rarely made with whole-herbs. So, I dusted off my old notes on incense making, checked out some books at the library and set to work. The Gods themselves have blessed this endeavor!
This switch from art to incense (and other metaphysical supplies) was the best decision I ever made as a business, but also as artist. For me, selling my original pieces was like selling a piece of my soul. So many of the metal pieces and painted boxes that I should have kept for myself are gone. I was undercharging for a lot of my art as well because, honestly, I just wanted it to sell. For a long time, I lost so much money vending because I just wanted to prove that I was good enough for people to want to buy my art. I see now that I wanted validation most of all during that time. Besides, how do you really put a price on something as subjective as art? I’ve had people come out of their way to tell me my work is trash and I should be ashamed, but then on the other hand, I’ve had people in other countries gladly pay $50+ in shipping so they could have a piece of my art. For me, selling my art exclusively was too unpredictable and too anxiety-inducing. It’s extremely hard putting yourself out there time and time again and getting criticisms from people who don’t understand your art. It certainly didn’t help that the majority of art markets I was vending in were over saturated with drop shipping and 3D printed slop as well!
Moving forward, I still intend to have prints and the occasional painted jewelry box available, but these items are not going to be the main attraction. They will be priced much higher than before to reflect the time, effort, and skill that goes into each piece. I always used to say that I wanted my art to be “accessible”, but I realize now that by undervaluing my work, I wasn’t making it accessible, I was destroying myself. I saw a quote online that said something to the effect of “you keep picking all your flowers to prove to everyone else you’re a gardener”. I think that sentiment sums up what happened here.
My biggest advice to anyone who wants to get into having a small business is to never loose sight of the joy. Just because you love doing something does not automatically mean it will be a good career! It is important to balance passion with practicality. Making a painting is a very raw, emotional, and energetic process for me. Making a batch of incense, on the other hand, is not that different from making a batch of cookies. Yet I can still be creative with making incense.
I’m sure Thee Ninth Keye will continue to evolve as time goes on. I am excited to see where it takes me. My plans for the future are big! I hope you all will walk with me on this path.
Thanks for reading! I will see you in the next one.
