Kate Sonell and her wife, Olivia Sonell are the co-founders of Cosmic Well, what they hope will be an incubator for multi-religious engagment, sublime spirituality, deep feminist thought, and fandom joy.
The two women share ritual together and live in a multi-religious “Jewslim” home, where they love telling and engaging with stories of all mediums (especially Star Wars), exploring practices of sacred sexuality, and generally loving life.
About Olivia
(Sometimes Magadalene bat Ammas) Olivia is a white settler woman of trans experience. She is a Multireligious Muslim writer, teaching artist, and Public Theologian. She has worked within and without Euro-American academic institutions, where she was awarded multiple degrees and other recognition for her creativity and scholarship. Her work has always had a feminist and spiritual bent to it, and she continues to study and write on the many potential intersections of the two. She is currently seeking to deepen her understanding of liberation theory, specifically exploring decolonial and anti-authoritarian ways of thinking and being.
Steeped in the world of theatre, Olivia has been an actor since she was 11 years old, although if you ask her mother she was always “dramatic.” As a young girl she wrote her own plays and performed them for her family, mimicked the pantomime of Red Skelton, and created whole new worlds with her brothers. Amidst the accepted channels of creativity, she was revolting against the gender designation being pushed on her. She creatively challenged who she was supposed to be and reinvented herself the way she needed to be. Her calling, as she understands it now, is to help open the space for other people to create wholistically- that is without constraint, bringing their whole selves to their work.
She loves reading Star Wars novels and novelizations, feminist theology, revolutionary history, biblical and Muslim scholarship, and writes both Star Wars fanfiction and stories set in her own worlds. For Olivia words are sacred and are a big part of how she fulfills her calling to create something beautiful in the ever-changing world. When not reading and writing feminist literature, Olivia is devoted to her wife and seeks to serve her and their shared communities in the way that the Prophets and Jedi served those close to them.
About Kate
(Also sometimes Seren, Seren-Rose, Kochav, or Kochav Yehudis) I am an autistic Jewish lesbian. My deepest investments of time and energy are in multidisciplinary work, multireligious ritual, theater (and other) artistry, homemaking, storytelling, and cultural research. I am currently seeking the path of the Hebrew Priestess.
My dream/calling is to connect people with the most honest story of who they are through meaningful artistry, scholarship, and ritual. I’m particularly in my element when fostering and indulging in the divine intersections between these elements through artistic creativity, ritual, and sensuous experiences. I believe deeply in the body as a source of the Divine – a concept known as Shekhinah in my spiritual path – and long to work with others to help them access that same embodied connectivity.
In short I am an enchantress; someone who believes deeply in the magic and wonder of the world, who sees the disconnect between the sublime experience our souls and bodies were made for and the colonized imperial hellscape in which we live, and works to mend that gaping wound. While I cannot shed a settler identity anymore than I can shed my white skin, I hope, pray, and fight for Indigenous sovereignty from Palestine to Turtle Island and beyond. I am driven in this and all of my work by the Jewish concept of tikkun olam; I perceive the world is broken, I perceive the world is beautiful, and I commit to sacred repair. I do this first and foremost in my sacred marriage and creative partnership with Olivia, where I foster betterment for the both of us and strive to keep us open to the path laid by the Force. I believe great change starts closest to the heart.