Reclaim Paradise. 

Kindred Hearts is a love-led ministry and creative studio founded by Evie and Thorn Summerisle-Astraeus. We have cultivated a haven that embodies joymaking for dreamers and seekers. 

Created by two romantic souls with decades of interfaith fellowship experience between them, Kindred Hearts is planting a garden where love blossoms in radiance. Our community isn’t limited to any religious/spiritual background; we seek communion with all who wish to follow a path of Heart-First living. We believe in the power of hope to strengthen the spirit, and of beauty to elevate humankind. 

Our guiding star is love, and if yours is too, you are welcome at our hearth. 

Kindred Hearts creates art and educational content with down-to-earth insight. We offer inspirational gifts intended to encourage you to live your best life: a path of enchantment, bliss, and healing. 

 

The Founders’ Story

We met the old-fashioned way: through mutual friends and a plethora of shared interests. Surprising nobody, our first date was at a showing of Argento’s Suspiria that opened with a live gothic ballet performance in a historic theater. Once back in the warmth of our lodgings after the event, we enjoyed Evie’s homemade raspberry chocolate brownies by candlelight, both struck by how spellbinding our connection felt. By the next Valentine’s Day, we had merged households and have not parted since: two starry eyed visionaries, entwined in love.

(In case it isn't obvious, we love to romanticize our lives and be as dramatically fun as we can. This philosophy is integral to our belief system and we highly recommend it!)

Through the years, while leading communities and pursuing transcendent education, we’ve gathered a practical treasury of knowledge and illumination about love and living a richly fulfilling life. Believing sparks of paradise should not be gatekept, we are inviting you to step into our quest for a life of wisdom and sweetness. 

Such is the experience of an enchanted life devoted to love that we hope every person can reach. It is impossible to control the chaos of the world outside, but you have the power to make little changes every day and bravely reach for the loveliness we know you can find. If you can find peace  and create wonder, it will radiate into the circles of the world and have a lasting impact—the depths of which you may never know. 

The mentorship, verse, and treasures offered by Kindred Hearts are not clinical or intended for those chasing a “quick fix” for life’s issues. We don’t claim to know any secrets of the universe or have the ability to solve every problem. But we do know that some of the most cherished parts of being human are the abilities to dream and create. To practice love and seek love, every day of our lives. 

Do you love Love? 

You can follow our work on social media:

More About Our Co-Founders

Evie

Dr. Evangeline Summerisle-Astraeus is a Venusian Metaphysician: a term she coined to describe her calling in the universe. Venusian= divine energy of sacred love and beauty. Metaphysician= a philosopher and creatrix who explores how to live well and love fully inside our strange and fascinating universe. Evie holds two bachelor’s degrees (humanities and metaphysics), a master’s degree in metaphysical science, and a PhD in ministry. She is a certified practitioner of holistic life coaching who has completed additional training in Jungian psychology, speculative metaphysics, and the history of magical practices during the Middle Ages. An eternal student of loveliness, art, and the great tapestry of humanity, Evie has worked in a number of fields including event planning, the healing arts, journalism, community organizing, education, and avant-garde performance art, but her current focus is on the metaphysical ministry of Kindred Hearts. 

Evie lives her heart’s passion of creating a more loving world by enchanting her reality. Her top artistic and spiritual inspirations are pagan mythology, the Pre-Raphaelites, “whimsigoth” and magical realism media of the 90’s and early 2000’s, stories of witches and goddesses, the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement, Tolkien, and heterodox religious movements of the early modern period. She believes in fairies (being one herself), has great respect for states of collective effervescence, and knows that love is the only thing that will save us. Well, love and hobbit-y feasts, friendship, lighthearted mischief, poetry, so on and so forth. 

A multidisciplinary casual artist and musician, Evie’s artistic interests—at extremely varying levels of skill—encompass but are not limited to piano, singing in multiple languages, doll collecting, digital art, cross-stitch, painting, flower-pressing, and photography. She’s been most recently seen learning the omnichord and kalimba, and will generally give any hobby a try if it has a chance of bringing personal pleasure. Her film interests are varied but focus on horror, fantasy, and historical dramas. Book-wise, she’ll read literally anything “as long as it isn’t boring.” To translate: lots of romance, dark fantasy, spicy biographies, women’s history, occult, Anne Rice, and whatever dry lengthy philosophical or sociological tome Thorn has playing on audiobook while putzing around the house. 

An avid friend to all animals but especially cats and other misunderstood creatures, Evie is usually an “inside cat” herself, but thanks to the miracles of modern allergy treatments, she has lately been venturing out for hikes in the woods where she enjoys fungi-spotting and strange bird calls. When not attempting other new leisure activities, she can be found baking breads and sweet treats (her creations may not always look professional but are guaranteed to taste good), and enjoying a small number of really addictive video games that she plays on repeat. While she loves to bake, don’t ask her to cook. She made spaghetti for Thorn once when they started dating, and her skills in the kitchen have not been called upon since. 

If you enjoy glitter graphics, philosophy/LOTR memes, crafting pics, and baking rants, you can follow Evie on social media:

 

Thorn

Dr. Thorn Summerisle-Astraeus holds degrees in metaphysical science and completed a PhD in spiritual counseling. The idea of a love ministry has been on his heart since the 1990’s. As a young man, he embarked on a spiritual quest, living rough on the magical streets of New Orleans. His early bright-eyed idealism was tempered quickly, after witnessing the cruelty and predation of self-styled spiritual visionaries who seemed more interested in coercing and grooming young innocents than in obtaining personal enlightenment. The takeaway gained from these experiences was that spiritual communities need protectors who keep carnivorous energies away from soft spirits that should be free to safely grow and explore on their journeys. With the renewed idea of strength and transcendence through love, Thorn began to truly live the heart-led practices that would have ripple effects on those around him. 

Having run the gamut of philosophies, Thorn continuously returns to the primacy of love. While many systems of thought allow rays of light to peek through, Thorn believes love throws open the curtains to let the sunshine in. He feels that his life experiences could not have prepared him better to enthuse all of his energies in creating a world where love is the driving force behind all we do. Some of his guiding interests include healthy masculinity and ethical hedonism.

All of his degrees were finished well into adulthood, seeing as he dropped out of his first Bachelor’s program as a teenager to embark on a more exciting path: joining the US Army. Nothing about Thorn’s life has been conventional; he has tread many professional paths varying from the boring to the thrilling, his travels along the reaches of creation leading him to numerous experiences he never would have expected growing up as a young boy in a high-control religious group. Amongst the milieu are some standout favorites: a stint in the fashion industry, educating at a natural science museum, independent filmmaking, and forklift operating. Thorn has worked providing security for government officials, rollicking in corporate accounting, leadership within alternative religious communities, managing international negotiations, and best of all…winning multiple ribbons for pickling at the state fair. 

He is an avid film buff, sculpture artist, and intuitive gardener. Thorn’s favorite artists are Nagel, Klimt, and Rothko, and his favorite eras to study are pre-Christian Mesoamerica (where much of his ancestry comes from) and Modern. When it comes to study and research foci, he is dedicated to esoterica, French and German philosophers of the 19th/20th centuries, theology, and the exploration of love and human sexuality via history and social commentary. If there’s extra time, he’ll indulge immersions into statistics, evolutionary biology, and astrophysics, but only when Evie isn’t around because “that’s boring,” and “I don’t care for math” and “I’ve seen Event Horizon, we don’t need to know what’s out there!”

He loves to cook, and would never leave a whole, sharp bay leaf in the spaghetti sauce for someone else to bite into unawares. 

For those who indulge in philosophy, relationship advice, character building, and film criticism, Thorn can be spotted on his social media: