Psychedelic Venus Church

In 1970, Jefferson Poland founded the Psychedelic Venus Church (PsyVen or PVC), an offshoot of the Sexual Freedom League Poland founded in 1963, with Mother Boats becoming President. He felt that the leadership of the Sexual Freedom League was becoming too bourgeois. The (entheogenic) sacrament of the Psychedelic Venus Church was marijuana and, after lighting up, at each meeting a woman was chosen to be Venus. At the beginning of services, she was placed on an altar, candles were lit on each side of her, and her vulva was smeared with honey. Each of the males (and some women if so inclined) at the meeting licked the woman's vulva in order to honor the goddess Venus. Then the orgy began in earnest. Meetings continued in the San Francisco Bay Area until 1972. The Church had 700 members by 1971 but disbanded in 1973.