So far, so good but need some recommendations

Hello, First post!

So I am chugging along after years of paying someone to maintain a Zen Cart website, i'm slowly getting this setup.

Our site sells candles we manufacture, used mostly for ritual purposes by pagan and spiritual people. Certain colors are used for certain intentions and So I want to offer to browse by two specific ways. I am playing with some placeholder graphics while I go about it but i'm having some issues and need to know if there are better ways of achieving what I need and get some opinions.

I'm trying to setup our store with products to browse categories:

By Type (Skulls, crosses, etc)
By Intent (Love, luck, blessing, etc)

For example, a red skull candle would be found when browsing:
"Products / Products by type / Skull Candles"
...but also when browsing:
"Products / Products by intent / Love & Attraction"

I got the inspiration from Caldrea.com as an example since I like the way they have their navigation setup by "fragrance" and by "product type" with graphical category images. Their navigation/filter of products is way more organized and i'm trying to achieve something similar to what they have. Any suggestions here is greatly appreciated.

I don't really like the way the categories display and hope I can find where I have more control over that without too much custom css.

Challenges:

• I am not confident I'm setting up the "store navigation" correctly but i'm finding that every category has the exact same header and paragraph text. Am I setting that up wrong because i'd like them to be different, most likely?
• I cannot seem to figure out how to edit the font and position of the breadcrumb / categories text/style when browsing "products" except for "top" or "side bar". I see different looks in other templates and this one looks rather plane.
• In setting up the navigation menu at the top, I've set up a couple of pages for both "by intent" and "by type" that i'm trying to make it so when people use these, they get a more pictorial representation of these categories. I don't know if this is the best way to go about htis in Squarespace. I don't want to confuse visitors or for them to get lost and make it so they can seamlessly browse deep into categories and reverse course without it being wierd.
• I cannot find how to place some sort of "coming soon" or "this category is empty" message when a category has no items such as "new arrivals" to say something instead of a blank screen.
• When someone navigates to "Products / Products By Type " it shows a bunch of products just kind of randomly. Is there a way to manage so that view only shows category names and not products to force a user to select a category before being presented with products? Perhaps my expectations here are wrong too.

Thank you for your guidance, any product add-ons/extensions you might suggest and your time!