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HOLY SMOKES
THE Sisters of the Valley, a group of self-ordained "weed nuns," are putting their faith in the powers of cannabis to help heal the world.
The nonreligious sect, comprised of a sorority of radical feminists, was founded by Sister Kate, 62, a self-declared "anarchist-activist nun," in 2015 in Northern California's Merced County.
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The women grow and harvest their own cannabis plants to create holistic medicinal products, such as cannabidiol (CBD) salves, tinctures, balms, and soaps which they sell online.
They use a strain of marijuana that eliminates the psychoactive compound of THC, but still contains CBD, which has been touted to help treat everything from epilepsy to cancer and addiction.
Sister Kate, real name Christine Meeusen, started the business with only 12 plants but has since grown the organization into an international outfit that was, until the pandemic, turning profits of more than $1.1million.
'RELIGIONS SELL WORDS'
Despite the group's moniker, Sister Kate told The Sun that the Sisters of the Valley are in no way affiliated with the Catholic Church.
"We do things that are spiritual but none of us are associated with any religion specifically," she explained. "Religions sell words but we want to do much more than that."
Sister Kate added that the Sisters of the Valley are striving to revive spiritual practices that "put Mother Earth at the center of everything."
"So we created something that is nonreligious, but it's spiritual – and it's very eco-feminist in nature."
According to Sister Kate, the group does emulate a number of elements true to the traditional nun lifestyle.
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The majority of the sisters, for instance, live together. They also take six vows of service which Sister Kate explained is different from the vow of poverty taken by traditional nuns.
"We take six vows which are all pretty simple and they spell out the acronym S-O-L-A-C-E," she said.
"The first one stands for service, the second obedience, and the third one stands for living simply.
"The fourth one stands for activism, the fifth one stands for chastity, and the sixth one is ecology.
"A vow is a necessary thing to do to get a commitment from [prospective sisters] before we allow them to dress and walk among us," Sister Kate continued.
She added that though Sisters must take a vow of chastity, that doesn't mean they have to be celibate.
"There are six definitions in the dictionary for celibacy, and we took the one that's most empowering to women, which is privatizing our sexuality and being modest in interests and manner," Sister Kate said.
"So in other words, we're not going to be sexy. The thing is we see this uniform like a police uniform or a sheriff's uniform and seduction and sexual energy are not at the same energy as healing.
"It's the opposite energy in our opinion," she said.
'IF PIZZA'S A VEGETABLE, I'M A NUN'
All of the group's ordained sisters wear traditional nun habits when working on the Sisters of the Valley farm.
Sister Kate first began wearing a habit at the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, protests in which she was heavily involved.
The decision to don the religious garment came amid a series of news reports that Congress had supposedly decided to classify pizza as a vegetable.
"My nephew said to me one night, 'If pizza is a vegetable then you're a nun.'
"I thought that was brilliant. I already had a nun outfit so I put it on and started going to protests wearing it. The movement later dubbed me 'Sister Occupy.'"
In addition to the vows of service, the sisterhood also makes a commitment to respect nature and lunar cycles.
All of the Sisters of the Valley's medicine is made according to the cycles of the moon, a nod to Native American traditions.
A new batch salve or tincture is started on the new moon and completed on the full moon two weeks later.
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Every full moon, the sisters also have a feast, a fire, and a ceremony.
"We know that if you remove the hocus pocus of contemporary religion if you take that away, then the next best elegant dance is setting your life to the cycles of nature," Sister Kate told The Sun.
"So, the moon cycles are a constant reminder about where we are on Planet Earth and to take care of her.
"Part of our belief system is that we are always constantly aware of three sets of people, those that went before us, those who marched with us now. And those generations to come.
"That and organizing your lives by the quarter of the moon and the full moons, and the new moons is a way of just keeping the Earth at the center of everything you're doing."
'I WAS PENNILESS'
Sister Kate has modeled the Sisterhood on the Beguines, a group of selfless laypeople who cared for the sick and poor in the Middle Ages and were focused on creating jobs for women, she said.
While many Beguines were "burned at the stake," Sister Kate says she and her other sisters are seeking to "heal the world and change the laws that victimize the marginalized."
Sister Kate's "spiritual awakening" was kick-started in 2005 when she separated from her husband of 13 years after she discovered that he'd allegedly been stealing vast sums of money from her.
At the time, the mother-of-three had been living in Europe and working as a marketing consultant for some of the world's biggest banks and firms. She was the breadwinner and her husband the housemaker.
Referring to this period as her "past normie life," Sister Kate said she saved more than a million dollars from her consulting work but later discovered that her husband had "stolen it all, leaving me penniless."
"I had three kids to support and it was a rough, rough road. It was also a realization that we had no safety net, so it inspired me to make my own."
It was also in Amsterdam where Sister Kate, who once voted for Ronald Reagan, became a staunch liberal.
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She said it was the Netherlands' universal social healthcare policy that really kick-started her political upheaval.
"[In Amsterdam] I saw functional socialism existing alongside functional capitalism," she said. "My full [medical] bill to have my children see a doctor out there was less than 10 percent copay in America.
"It was insane and I was outside the system so I didn't get any of the [free] benefits.
"That was the beginning for me," she said. "I realized we're getting so ripped off. We're so ripped off we never should've thrown the tea overboard, otherwise, we'd have universal healthcare right now."
A few years later, in 2008, she moved in with her brother and his two children in Merced.
The following year, she set up a medical cannabis delivery company for the terminally ill and disabled, where she said she witnessed the drug's healing powers firsthand.
By 2011 her Sister Kate alter-ego was born, however, soon after she suffered a falling out with her brother and was once again left homeless.
She and her daughter sofa-surfed with other members of the Occupy movement for around four months before she stumbled on a $1,000 per-month property in Merced.
SISTERS OF THE VALLEY
While it took her several years to get back on her feet, on January 1, 2015, she officially set up Sisters of the Valley.
Her first sister, Darcy, enrolled in the sect nine months later, and several others joined in the following months.
Sister Kate said she has since personally ordained more than 20 Sisters of the Valley, with more set to join in the months ahead.
There are currently three other sisters living with her at her farm, with another set move in, in October.
In addition to California, there are now Sisterhoods in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, and New Zealand.
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Sister Kate says she wants a sisterhood in every town and province across the world within the next 25 years.
"We believe that the most painless way to fix the world is having women own everything," Sister Kate said. "So we're on a mission to make sure that women are empowered.
"We don't have anything against men," she added. "We do actually have some Brothers of the Valley, and they love the women making decisions."
The business had gone from strength to strength until the pandemic struck last year.
In its first year of operations, Sisters of the Valley raked in just $75,000. The following year, that ballooned to more than $750,000.
Then in 2018 and 2019, returns exceeded the $1million mark.
'STILL A CAPITALIST'
"In 2020 we did about 700,000 in sales. But 2021 is looking worse than last year economically," Sister Kate said. "We're hoping to expand our international reach to help weather the storm a little."
All of the sisters are paid hourly, Kate says. Despite her leftist views, she says she's "still a capitalist" and the sisterhood has "a time clock."
In their off time, Sister Kate says her sect spend their time just as others do: surfing the internet, watching Netflix, reading, and sitting around talking.
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When quizzed over whether the sisterhood likes to get high on its own supply, Sister Kate responded: "We're all very happy with how our lives are and how we ended up together here, so we don't very often.
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"Smoking is something all of us did a lot more of when we were under stress or under attack or whatever. Getting high is a way of escaping, so we don't need that as much anymore.
"We tend to make our own CBD tea or just smoke CBD instead. Sometimes we'll put a little spike of THC in a joint we make to give ourselves a little buzz, though."
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