‘Weed nuns’ celebrate 420 Day by announcing plans to blaze new path on their green tour – are they coming to your city?
THE Sisters of the Valley, a group of self-ordained "weed nuns", will be hitting the road this summer on a pro-pot pilgrimage to preach the healing powers of cannabis.
Sister Kate, the founder of the non-religious radical feminist sect, told The US Sun that her group will be visiting five different cities in the coming months as part of their "green tour."
"On the green tour we are planning ... [to] spend time with the people, giving away hemp seeds and explaining why everyone needs to grow it wild," Kate said.
"Hemp is a bio-accumulator and will clean soil that has been toxified by chemicals or heavy metals," she explained.
The sisterhood will kick off their tour in their hometown of Merced, California, before making stops in Oakland, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego.
News of the tour comes on 420 Day, an annual event seeking to celebrate marijuana consumption in the US and beyond.
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For the Sisters of the Valley, Kate says 420 is not considered a "sacred day", but the group will be celebrating by attending an event held by a local police chief at a dispensary later this evening.
"Our sacred days are full moons and the four corners of the year - the equinoxes and solstices," she explained.
"[But] it's interesting to us when we get invitations from law enforcement to celebrate so we'll definitely be going."
SISTERS OF THE VALLEY
The Sisters of the Valley grow and harvest their own cannabis plants to create holistic medicinal products, such as cannabidiol (CBD) salves, tinctures, balms, and soaps .
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.
Even as the virus has stalled, Kate says sales have continued to struggle, with their international sales taking the biggest hit, dropping from 20% of their total business before the pandemic to just 1% percent now.
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Still, Kate says she has no plans to scale back her business, convinced a divine power will soon turn their fortunes around.
"We move on in great faith that the universe will find a way for us and we have no plans to remove any of the programs we launched," Kate said.
"We are just waiting and watching, knowing that they will catch wind as there is some nationwide economic recovery."
A HIGHER POWER
Despite the group's moniker, Sister Kate said 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.
For instance, all of the group's ordained sisters wear traditional nun habits when working on the Sisters of the Valley farm.
The majority of the nuns also live together and have to 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.
BLAZING A PATH
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.
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.
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"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.
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"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."
To learn more about the Sisters of the Valley, .
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