The London Telegraph reports on a legal battle regarding the rights to profits made from the sale of a 19th century church building, erm, erected by a religious sex cult The Abode of Love aka the Agapemonites. One of the granddaughters of the second leader of the sect wrote a book about the otherwise, now obscure religious group to wit:
“Kate Barlow, one Smyth-Piggott’s granddaughters, wrote a 2006 book about her experiences growing up within the cult, which was alleged to have indulged in orgies and married ‘heavenly bridegrooms’ to ‘soul brides.'”
Ms. Barlow’s book Abode of Love: Growing Up in a Messianic Cult – available here: https://www.amazon.com/Abode-Love-Growing-Messianic-Cult/dp/0864924577
The 19th century was rife with such groups and doctrines of sacred sexuality were being developed and popularized by such figures as Ida Craddock — one of whose tracts was titled “Heavenly Bridegrooms” — and Pascal Beverly Randolph in the U.S. Doctrines of Solar Phallicism were another manifestation such thought and would be written about by authors like Hargrave Jennings, Richard Payne Knight and others — all referenced by Aleister Crowley
Here’s the article about the sale: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/06/battle-over-sale-of-victorian-sex-cult-church/
and one on the group: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agapemonites
