Comedian and actor Aubrey Plaza is here to dispel any doubts you had about pot and piety. In this video by The Cut, Plaza gets high and trims cannabis buds with the Sisters of the Valley, a.k.a. the Weed Nuns. During the sesh, Sister Kate and Sister Eevee describe to Plaza their relationship to cannabis, and to Christ.
“Cannabis oil was the other holy oil of the Bible,” said Sister Kate. “Our position is, if Jesus lived, he probably smoked weed.”
The nuns grow weed in Merced, California, as a means of supporting themselves. Cultivating cannabis creates “honorable spiritual jobs for women,” Sister Kate said. “It’s unfortunate that our medical system has been so oppressive in keeping knowledge of holistic medicine oppressed.”
The Sisters of the Valley create a number of cannabis products, mostly high in the non-psychotropic compound CBD, including salves, tinctures, and a sage spray. And despite appearing as nuns, the sisterhood maintains the position that they’re not part of any order of the Catholic Church.
“We’re against religion, so we’re not a religion. We consider ourselves Beguine revivalists, and we reach back to pre-Christian practices,” said Sister Kate. In 2014, she founded the the sisterhood, with its Holy Trinity being the cannabis plant. And while they dress like nuns, she said their outfits are meant to show respect to a plant. Sister Kate, herself, began dressing like a nun during the Occupy Wall Street protest in 2011. She became known as “Sister Occupy.” “We’ve gotten a few hate calls, but by and far, the Catholics understand what we’re doing,” she said.
To become part of the sisterhood, a woman must have a “commercial relationship” and earn a wage or a commission, according to Sister Kate. “We want to grow this way because we want to free the women, we don’t want to make them more dependent.” In 2016, the sisterhood brought in about $750,000 in sales.
So while the Weed Nuns aren’t as religious as you might have thought originally, their mission is still to help people — namely medical marijuana patients struggling with cancer. Once people, especially Catholics, see that the nuns are “serious women on a serious mission,” helping cancer patients, Sister Kate explained, people warm up to them and what they’re doing.
