Nixie is a practitioner of Vodou, a spiritual system of African origin that includes reverence for ancestors, communication with archetypal energies, rituals, and herbal treatments.  In addition to serving the Vodou spirits, she reads tarot cards, a skill she began building at age 13 when invited to work the fortune teller booth at a school fair.  Nixie is also an avid herb gardener, folkloric herbalist, and creator of perfumes and oils infused with magical intention, which she will offer for sale at the shop.  She trained in Mexican curanderismo practices at the University of New Mexico’s annual summer program in 2022 and plans to integrate what she learned into her offerings at the Serpent.  She views tattooing as a talismanic magical act even when not explicitly marketed as such.

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Nixie’s path to her current career and spiritual practice has been a winding one.  Raised without religion by a pair of half-hispanic hippies in upstate New York, she was a precocious artist and sensitive soul who saw the world as swarming with living beings.  After spending her high school and art school years dabbling in witchcraft and longing for connection with the divine, Nixie joined a group that studied the teachings of George Gurdjieff, as well as meditation, Sufi dance, and esoteric Christianity.  She remained in that cloistered community for fifteen years, running a Montessori program within its compound.  Eventually, however, she realized that the laser-like attention practices she learned there were only half of the spiritual puzzle, and left to pursue the urgings of an inner voice, awash with imagination, that she can only define as the Divine Feminine.  The desire to tattoo, a career she began ten years ago, was her ticket out of the teaching gig and into the world at large.  On her journey to reconnect with creativity, dreams, and the practices of her Caribbean ancestors, she encountered Vodou in the book Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, eventually seeking out Mama Lola’s daughter and successor Maggie Champagne-Gomez, who became her godmother.