This week on The Conscious Consultant Hour, Sam welcomes Researcher, Alchemist and Author, P. D. Newman.
P.D. Newman has been immersed in the study and practice of shamanism, alchemy, hermetism, and theurgy for more than two decades. The author of Theurgy: Theory and Practice: The Mysteries of the Ascent to the Divine, Angels in Vermilion: The Philosophers' Stone from Dee to DMT, and Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry.
The use of hallucinogenic substances like peyote and desert tobacco has long played a significant role in the spiritual practices and traditions of Native Americans. While many of those practices are well documented, the relationship between entheogens and Native Americans of the Southeast - whose psychedelic use was just as sophisticated - has gone largely unexplored. In Tripping the Trail of Ghosts: Psychedelics and the Afterlife Journey in Native American Mound Cultures, P.D. Newman examines these lost psychedelic traditions.
Examining the role of psychoactive plants in afterlife traditions, sacred rituals, and spirit journeying by shamans of the Mississippian mound cultures, P. D. Newman explores in depth the Native American death journey known as the “Trail of Ghosts” or “Path of Souls.”
He demonstrates how practices such as fasting and trancework alongside psychedelic plants like jimsonweed, black nightshade, morning glory, amanita and psilocybin mushrooms, and an as-yet-undocumented analogue to ayahuasca were used to evoke the liminal state between life and death in initiatory rites and spirit journeys for shamans and chiefs.
Tune in and share all of your questions and comments about Psychedelic Traditions on our YouTube livestream or on our Facebook page.
Sam opens this week’s episode of The Conscious Consultant Hour with a reflection on how context shapes the meaning of our life stories, reminding us that when we view events without their surrounding details, we often miss deeper lessons. He shares personal experiences and family insights that reveal how re-examining the past with broader awareness can bring clarity, compassion, and understanding to ourselves and others. This sets the stage for his conversation with guest P.D. Newman, whose work explores shamanism, alchemy, and Native American psychedelic traditions, all within the larger context of how culture and consciousness evolve.
In this segment of The Conscious Consultant Hour, P.D. Newman shares how his early psychedelic experiences led him to explore Freemasonry, where he discovered striking parallels between symbolic rituals and his encounters with DMT. He explains how ancient esoteric traditions, from alchemy to biblical references like the “burning bush,” reveal hidden connections to psychoactive plants such as acacia, suggesting that consciousness-expanding substances have been interwoven into Western spiritual practices for millennia. Sam and P.D. highlight how these subtle but powerful links, often hidden in plain sight, invite us to re-examine sacred texts and traditions with fresh awareness of their mystical and psychedelic dimensions.
In this segment, P.D. Newman explains how his latest book, Tripping the Trail of Ghosts, was inspired by parallels between Platonic soul-ascent traditions and Southeastern Native American “path of souls” cosmology. His research uncovered evidence that Indigenous mound cultures in Mississippi and the Southeast intentionally cultivated psychoactive plants—combining holly, passionflower, tobacco, and honey locust root—to create ayahuasca-like brews long before such practices were documented in South America. Newman emphasizes that these findings reveal a rich, overlooked spiritual tradition where psychedelics were used not only for healing and ritual but also to prepare souls for the afterlife journey, challenging materialist views and deepening our understanding of Indigenous wisdom.
In this closing segment of The Conscious Consultant Hour, P.D. Newman explains that the Trail of Ghosts, also known as the Path of Souls, was a sacred teaching among Southeastern Native cultures that described the Milky Way as the road of departed spirits. He reveals how secret societies initiated select members through rituals, mound-site reenactments, and psychedelic brews to prepare them for this afterlife journey, blending symbolic teachings with direct visionary experiences. Sam wraps up the show by highlighting Newman’s groundbreaking research, his upcoming books, and encouraging listeners to explore these hidden dimensions of Indigenous wisdom, where spirituality, ritual, and psychedelics intersect.
00:00:45.610 --> 00:00:56.090 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Good afternoon, my conscious co-creators! Welcome to another edition of the Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity.
00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:11.019 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Very, very pleased, as always, that you are here with me today. We have another fascinating show in store for you today, one I'm really looking forward to interviewing my guest, and
00:01:11.020 --> 00:01:27.220 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: talking about this topic, one of my favorite topics. But first, of course, we have my blog post from a couple of years ago, so let's get started with that so I can get to my guest as soon as possible. All right, so today's blog post is entitled.
00:01:27.640 --> 00:01:31.190 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Context makes everything clearer.
00:01:32.460 --> 00:01:39.359 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We all make stories about our lives, and we create tremendous meaning from those stories.
00:01:39.510 --> 00:01:44.379 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Our history and our experience colors all of these stories.
00:01:45.030 --> 00:01:50.499 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: To the point that we are convinced all these stories are true.
00:01:51.090 --> 00:01:56.250 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We are so sure that they happened exactly the way we remember.
00:01:57.210 --> 00:02:02.179 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yet we are confused as to why people acted the way they did.
00:02:02.660 --> 00:02:05.309 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Why they said what they said.
00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:11.600 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: When we get so focused on the details, we can miss the point.
00:02:12.550 --> 00:02:20.589 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We can lose the lesson to learn because we are only seeing things from a limited perspective.
00:02:21.390 --> 00:02:25.169 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: If we take the time to remember the context.
00:02:25.670 --> 00:02:28.650 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Content can make much more sense.
00:02:29.790 --> 00:02:33.379 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: New patterns emerge before our eyes.
00:02:33.540 --> 00:02:40.190 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: A deeper understanding can be achieved when there are more details to fill in the background.
00:02:41.060 --> 00:02:46.769 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: The context gives us a clearer framework with which to see a situation.
00:02:47.840 --> 00:02:54.200 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Whether the instance was long ago in our childhood, or yesterday at the grocery store.
00:02:55.090 --> 00:03:03.089 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Even remembering that the situation happened in a store or at home can make a big difference.
00:03:03.640 --> 00:03:08.490 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: The setting, the time, what happened before and after.
00:03:08.670 --> 00:03:15.019 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It all makes a huge impact on the meaning we derive from the situation.
00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:20.430 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It can help us see patterns where there were none before.
00:03:21.670 --> 00:03:26.519 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Or it can help see new or different patterns than what we thought.
00:03:26.950 --> 00:03:36.709 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And when we discuss these situations, it is also helpful to see how things have changed since the situation we are remembering occurred.
00:03:37.430 --> 00:03:39.600 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: For life is not stagnant.
00:03:39.780 --> 00:03:42.979 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It is in constant motion.
00:03:43.990 --> 00:03:46.190 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And as fluid as water.
00:03:47.090 --> 00:03:53.780 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Just because we acted one way for many years does not mean there has not been a change.
00:03:54.680 --> 00:04:05.200 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Perhaps with each instance, we learned something. We changed. And even though our actions were similar, perhaps we modified our actions
00:04:05.420 --> 00:04:08.389 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Just a little each time.
00:04:09.770 --> 00:04:14.570 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Without the context, we cannot see the change clearly.
00:04:15.530 --> 00:04:20.720 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We cannot see how we have changed, or how others have changed in the process.
00:04:21.910 --> 00:04:26.709 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So when we decide to look at a particular point in our lives.
00:04:26.870 --> 00:04:33.470 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It is always helpful to remember what came before and what came after.
00:04:34.190 --> 00:04:38.660 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: For nothing in our life exists in a vacuum.
00:04:39.450 --> 00:04:43.130 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It is all interrelated and interwoven.
00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:50.160 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: For we are the products of all we have lived up until this very moment.
00:04:51.320 --> 00:04:53.149 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: All of it matters.
00:04:54.850 --> 00:05:01.210 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So next time we stop to review what happened before, or what we did.
00:05:01.460 --> 00:05:06.219 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It is very helpful to put it all in context.
00:05:06.450 --> 00:05:08.780 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: To everything that surrounds it.
00:05:10.050 --> 00:05:14.130 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So where in your own life do you take things out of context?
00:05:14.590 --> 00:05:17.190 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: How different would those things look?
00:05:17.310 --> 00:05:22.659 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: If you put them in the proper context of all that surrounded it.
00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:31.120 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So… … I believe I wrote this blog post
00:05:31.290 --> 00:05:33.860 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: After a conversation with my wife.
00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:38.290 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Where we were talking about something that happened in the past.
00:05:38.830 --> 00:05:41.470 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And, …
00:05:41.880 --> 00:05:54.509 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: she would, … said it was like this, I said it was like that, and I think we had a little bit of a disagreement over exactly what happened or how it unfolded.
00:05:56.190 --> 00:06:01.109 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I believe, like, we're thinking about it and talking about it, and when we…
00:06:01.530 --> 00:06:10.379 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: kind of remembered what happened before and what happened afterwards, then it made the whole situation actually much clearer.
00:06:11.660 --> 00:06:15.850 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: That without the context of what was going on at the time.
00:06:16.550 --> 00:06:20.409 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It was difficult to really understand what had happened.
00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:26.670 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I apologize, I can't remember exactly what it was we were talking about.
00:06:28.150 --> 00:06:34.270 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But I remember that sometimes… when I say something.
00:06:36.310 --> 00:06:40.919 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I talk about a particular situation.
00:06:42.740 --> 00:06:46.449 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: when I… I… I look at it in the moment.
00:06:48.080 --> 00:06:51.930 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: because I now have a different context, I might…
00:06:52.970 --> 00:06:56.929 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: shift some of the details about the way I tell the story.
00:06:58.580 --> 00:07:00.469 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But when I look at…
00:07:01.280 --> 00:07:07.670 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: you know, really what was going on around the whole thing, it makes it easier to really see
00:07:07.870 --> 00:07:13.890 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: what the point was, or what the story, what I'm making of the story.
00:07:15.470 --> 00:07:21.430 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I'm sure there was something taken out of context, and it didn't make sense.
00:07:22.740 --> 00:07:27.429 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And once I remembered what was going on around it, it made a lot more sense.
00:07:28.160 --> 00:07:46.660 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And then I noticed that in working with some of my clients, the same thing would happen, especially around things that happen in childhood. You know, we really… as we get older, we forget more and more of the details of what happened when we were younger.
00:07:47.330 --> 00:07:54.589 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And when we look at what our parents did, or what our siblings did, We tend to…
00:07:54.800 --> 00:08:01.589 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Like, come up with this story, and then we only remember the things that uphold our story.
00:08:02.070 --> 00:08:06.620 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But when we look at the broader context, what was going on at the time?
00:08:07.530 --> 00:08:15.900 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: it can add more understanding to the situation. It can help things to make more sense.
00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:22.600 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You know, such as, like, things that my father did.
00:08:23.060 --> 00:08:28.850 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Which, actually, I just found out something… I, I…
00:08:29.180 --> 00:08:32.119 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I might have known, but I had forgotten about.
00:08:33.179 --> 00:08:39.600 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: that, … You know, my, my… Father's first wife.
00:08:40.059 --> 00:08:44.270 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: After she gave birth to my brother, had postpartum depression.
00:08:46.310 --> 00:08:51.839 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But what I had forgotten about, my brother, my… I just got together with my brother and sister.
00:08:52.830 --> 00:08:57.760 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: That my dad, at the time, he had just lost his job.
00:08:59.540 --> 00:09:02.319 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And he said, you know, that could have been…
00:09:02.840 --> 00:09:08.270 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: One of the instigating factors about why his mom Had postpartum depression.
00:09:09.370 --> 00:09:13.599 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I was like, oh… And… and…
00:09:13.860 --> 00:09:21.259 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I always knew that his mom had postpartum depression. She ended up Committing suicide because of it.
00:09:22.490 --> 00:09:27.780 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But I didn't have that extra little piece, which now gives it more context, which now makes things
00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:31.100 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: more clear… About what happened.
00:09:32.260 --> 00:09:36.260 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And this was just this past weekend, I learned about this.
00:09:36.670 --> 00:09:42.849 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Because, you know, my dad had… was forced to retire, and I remember he lost his job when I was…
00:09:43.290 --> 00:09:50.099 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: A teenager in high school, But I didn't know about what had happened before.
00:09:50.680 --> 00:09:57.359 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I kind of, when he said it, it sounded a little familiar, so I think he might have told me this before.
00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:01.980 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But… but it'd been so long, I'd completely forgotten that little detail.
00:10:05.510 --> 00:10:10.219 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, to me, the, the… Our memory is very fickle.
00:10:11.760 --> 00:10:21.120 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: there are certain things we remember, and a lot of things we don't remember. You know, I was just in China with my wife, visiting her family.
00:10:21.450 --> 00:10:31.370 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And, she was… stayed in her sister's place for a while and found old letters she had written from when she was, you know, a young woman.
00:10:31.520 --> 00:10:35.100 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And to people and friends she couldn't even remember.
00:10:35.400 --> 00:10:38.330 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: She was going through stuff and telling me about it.
00:10:40.430 --> 00:10:46.720 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So next time that we think that we're so sure that something happened a certain way.
00:10:48.470 --> 00:10:52.469 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It might be worth our time to really look at.
00:10:53.430 --> 00:11:03.040 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: What's the context? What was happening around that situation? Are we truly remembering The way things happened.
00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:04.559 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Or are we not?
00:11:04.860 --> 00:11:07.260 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Are we missing that context?
00:11:07.900 --> 00:11:14.999 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, that's, our blog post for this week. The title of it is, Context Makes Everything Clearer.
00:11:15.080 --> 00:11:28.219 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And if you like my blog post, of course, you can always find it at my personally branded website at theconsciousconsultant.com, or on the station's website at talkradio.nyc slash blog.
00:11:28.650 --> 00:11:44.019 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: All right, now, it is my extreme pleasure to welcome to the show researcher, alchemist, and author P.D. Newman. P.D. Newman has been immersed in the study and practice of shamanism, alchemy.
00:11:44.040 --> 00:11:55.950 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hermeticism, and Theurgy for more than two decades. He is the author of Theurgy, Theory and Practice, The Mysteries of the Ascent to the Divine.
00:11:56.010 --> 00:12:07.630 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Angels in Vermilion, The Philosopher's Stone from D to DMT, and Alchemically Stoned, The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry.
00:12:07.870 --> 00:12:23.280 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: The use of hallucinogenic substances like peyote, tobacco, has long played a significant role in the spiritual practices and traditions of Native Americans. While many of those practices are well documented, the relationship between
00:12:23.660 --> 00:12:28.590 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: ethnogens and Native Americans of the Southwest.
00:12:28.900 --> 00:12:42.760 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Southeast, whose psychedelic use was just as sophisticated, has gone largely unexplored. In tripping the trail of ghosts, psychedelics, and the afterlife journey in Native American mound cultures.
00:12:42.760 --> 00:12:49.349 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: PD examines these lost psychedelic traditions. Welcome to the Conscious Consultant Hour, PD.
00:12:50.220 --> 00:12:52.509 P.D. Newman: Thank you, Sam. Glad to be here.
00:12:52.510 --> 00:13:02.069 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Pleasure to have you, a pleasure to have you. It's always nice to connect with somebody who has a deep interest in understanding, our
00:13:02.270 --> 00:13:12.860 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: where things came from, and again, I guess kind of appropriate, my blog post for this week, the context in which the culture developed. So, I'm curious…
00:13:12.860 --> 00:13:24.769 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: like, what got you started on this path? What got you really interested in learning more about the past and different cultures and contexts around these
00:13:24.770 --> 00:13:27.549 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: These, esoteric topics.
00:13:29.150 --> 00:13:38.579 P.D. Newman: Well, you know, it all started with psychedelics. As a very young man, starting around age 11,
00:13:38.990 --> 00:13:42.970 P.D. Newman: we had learned how to pick mushrooms here in the Deep South, and…
00:13:43.810 --> 00:13:52.180 P.D. Newman: Very quickly, we started having experiences that we had no context for, which led me to look into…
00:13:52.620 --> 00:14:08.769 P.D. Newman: Eastern and Western philosophies, and from there, I really discovered the beauty and the power of ritual, and everything else just kind of fell into place. I just kind of, you know, followed my nose once I found a trail.
00:14:08.770 --> 00:14:28.719 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wow, wow. So, you know, when you forage for mushrooms in the wild, you really have to know what you're getting. You know, what got you kind of looking for them initially? Was it a friend that turned you on to it? Was it something you had always been interested in yourself?
00:14:29.200 --> 00:14:31.190 P.D. Newman: My father actually taught me.
00:14:31.190 --> 00:14:31.560 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh!
00:14:31.560 --> 00:14:32.120 P.D. Newman: …
00:14:32.450 --> 00:14:40.150 P.D. Newman: And I didn't know this until years later, but there was a cow field, you know, the psilocybin cubensis grow in
00:14:40.210 --> 00:14:49.960 P.D. Newman: cow manure, so long as they're fed the proper diet. And there was a cow field next to my grandmother's house, and … my brother and I had gotten up at the crack of dawn, and
00:14:49.980 --> 00:15:07.889 P.D. Newman: We're walking this field, picking mushrooms, putting them in our little Walmart bags, and I hear my uncle, my very straight uncle that does not do anything except, you know, go to the Church of Christ, hollering for us. So we kind of stash the mushrooms and
00:15:08.210 --> 00:15:11.910 P.D. Newman: We… Reluctantly walked down to him.
00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:31.330 P.D. Newman: And he says, what do y'all do in that field? And before I could answer him, he said, you know, you're just like your granddaddy Doherty. He used to walk that same cow field at the crack of dawn, picking Lord knows what. And that's the first time I'd ever heard about my great-grandfather Doherty. And it turns out that he was trained
00:15:31.570 --> 00:15:38.120 P.D. Newman: as an Aokichi, a medicine man in the…
00:15:39.120 --> 00:15:41.970 P.D. Newman: And the local tribe, which is… this was in…
00:15:42.140 --> 00:15:51.900 P.D. Newman: in and around Cenatobia, Mississippi. But he eventually left the family and went to live with the natives. He was so immersed in the tradition.
00:15:52.480 --> 00:16:11.569 P.D. Newman: But I inherited his ledger, and it turns out that he was the healer for the town. He would heal mules and children, and he would list the herbs he'd use, but he'd use names for them that I can't identify. They'd be often in the tongue of the tribe he was working with.
00:16:11.570 --> 00:16:17.219 P.D. Newman: So, you know, it… I… I learned it from my father, but it seems like I got it
00:16:17.410 --> 00:16:19.189 P.D. Newman: natural, you know what I mean?
00:16:19.190 --> 00:16:21.640 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Gotcha, gotcha, kind of in the genes.
00:16:21.640 --> 00:16:23.400 P.D. Newman: Yeah. So….
00:16:23.400 --> 00:16:30.090 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Your great-grandfather, was he part Indian, or he was just working with the local Indian?
00:16:30.090 --> 00:16:37.159 P.D. Newman: He was not… there's no Indian in our blood on either side of my family.
00:16:37.160 --> 00:16:37.900 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh, okay.
00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:43.600 P.D. Newman: So, I don't know how he fell in with them. My grandmother doesn't remember how.
00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:44.330 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It was her….
00:16:44.330 --> 00:16:47.599 P.D. Newman: Her grandfather, so really, my great-great-grandfather.
00:16:47.600 --> 00:16:48.449 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Very cool, wow.
00:16:48.450 --> 00:16:50.880 P.D. Newman: But he doesn't remember, …
00:16:50.910 --> 00:17:04.910 P.D. Newman: she's passed now, but I tried to get her to tell me everything she could about him, because the idea of an ancestor walking the same cow field that's been in this other family for generations just really…
00:17:04.940 --> 00:17:17.389 P.D. Newman: sparked my imagination, you know, about how much we imagine that we have free will. And we do, of course, to an extent, but to a large degree.
00:17:17.609 --> 00:17:23.370 P.D. Newman: We're living out ancient patterns that, don't always become visible immediately.
00:17:23.579 --> 00:17:26.739 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely.
00:17:26.739 --> 00:17:45.759 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: All right, it's time for us to take our first break. When we come back, I just want to talk a little bit about what got you started in writing, you know, in sort of researching the psychedelics and the history of it, what got you writing books initially, and then we'll work our way up to your latest book, Tripping the Trail of Ghosts, okay?
00:17:46.060 --> 00:17:46.799 P.D. Newman: Sounds good.
00:17:46.880 --> 00:18:07.399 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful. So everyone, please stay tuned. You're listening to The Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity. We do this every Thursday, 12 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern, right here on talkradio.nyc, and all over social media. And we'll be right back with our guest, Petey Newman, author of the book, Tripping the Trail of Ghosts, in just a moment.
00:20:22.630 --> 00:20:37.710 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And welcome back to The Conscious Consultant Hour Awakening Humanity. We're speaking this hour with Petey Newman, author of many books, including his latest book, Tripping the Trail of Ghosts. Petey, so I'm curious, so you… through psychedelics.
00:20:37.710 --> 00:20:50.959 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: you got interested in sort of studying about it, but what brought you to, like, studying about it in the past, and where it came from, and the context? I mean, you've written about
00:20:50.960 --> 00:21:04.970 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: psychedelics and Freemasonry, the Philosopher's Zone, like, you've really dug into, sort of, some of the older places in which psychedelics appear. What caught you interested in that aspect of it?
00:21:06.240 --> 00:21:13.150 P.D. Newman: Well, it's… it's really the same… the same territory. So, like I said, really quick, I ended up in…
00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:22.729 P.D. Newman: territory that I had no frame of reference for, no concept for how to discuss or make concrete, take out of the abstract.
00:21:23.250 --> 00:21:31.189 P.D. Newman: And I knew that I had found parallels in things like the Dao Tejing, and in the Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads.
00:21:31.330 --> 00:21:48.730 P.D. Newman: But I'm in Mississippi, you know, there are no ashrams here. I didn't even know a Hindu, or a Buddhist even, you know? But I was aware of the esoteric proclivities of Freemasonry, because Masonry is very visible here. It's celebrated here.
00:21:48.730 --> 00:21:49.250 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh.
00:21:49.640 --> 00:21:54.450 P.D. Newman: So, I never thought I would get accepted, but I petitioned.
00:21:54.620 --> 00:21:59.890 P.D. Newman: And was voted, What they call elected to receive the three degrees.
00:21:59.890 --> 00:22:03.169 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Now, shortly before this, one of the things that had.
00:22:03.290 --> 00:22:09.489 P.D. Newman: thrown me into such a place that I… with which I was unfamiliar psychically.
00:22:09.630 --> 00:22:12.080 P.D. Newman: was N-dimethyltryptamine.
00:22:12.260 --> 00:22:18.539 P.D. Newman: Which I had recently extracted from a psychoactive species of acacia.
00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:30.449 P.D. Newman: So that was what was fresh on my mind before I became a Freemason. Now, when I made it to the third degree, without going into too much detail, the…
00:22:31.050 --> 00:22:45.549 P.D. Newman: Which, what is arguably the central symbol of that degree is this sprig of acacia that's associated with becoming conscious of your soul, its immortality, and its ability to go places other than be in a body.
00:22:45.680 --> 00:22:48.289 P.D. Newman: So when I saw that.
00:22:48.370 --> 00:23:06.499 P.D. Newman: I'm immediately thinking, wow, that's a coincidence, because those are exactly the things I was struggling with, with the DMT I experienced from the Acacia. But I said, you know what, let's not fall into confirmation bias, let's meet this symbol on its own terms.
00:23:06.790 --> 00:23:09.809 P.D. Newman: And just put that out of the way for a while.
00:23:10.140 --> 00:23:28.269 P.D. Newman: And then the next thing I did, having become so impressed with the rituals of the fraternity, I began reading every version of the rituals that I can find, because they change not only by country, but they change by state, by Grand Lodge jurisdictions.
00:23:28.270 --> 00:23:29.200 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh, wow.
00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:31.570 P.D. Newman: long before I encountered
00:23:31.830 --> 00:23:44.830 P.D. Newman: the writings of Alessandro Di Cagliostro, an alchemist who lived in the 18th century, and he wrote something called the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, and in his version.
00:23:45.070 --> 00:23:51.330 P.D. Newman: He has the candidate drink a red liqueur that's on the altar, and while he's drinking it, he says.
00:23:51.770 --> 00:24:04.099 P.D. Newman: This is going to raise your spirit so that you may understand what's about to follow in a different way, which is about as close as you can get with the linguistic limitations to saying.
00:24:04.290 --> 00:24:09.210 P.D. Newman: this is going to expand your consciousness, right, and change your perception.
00:24:09.490 --> 00:24:15.990 P.D. Newman: And then as he's drinking it, he tells him that this is the Philosopher's Stone that you're drinking. It's from the.
00:24:15.990 --> 00:24:16.730 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: the.
00:24:16.730 --> 00:24:30.089 P.D. Newman: primal matter, and he says the primal matter is nothing but the acacia that you received in the ordinary degree of Master Mason. So he's telling him he's drinking a psychoactive concoction of acacia, and that's what
00:24:30.310 --> 00:24:34.480 P.D. Newman: drove me to write, because I thought, this has been…
00:24:34.690 --> 00:24:47.119 P.D. Newman: lost for 300 years, if I don't write it down, it might never get written down. And I was, you know, terrified I'd get ejected from the fraternity, you know, I didn't know what would happen.
00:24:48.090 --> 00:24:51.190 P.D. Newman: But everything went great, you know, and …
00:24:51.910 --> 00:24:57.019 P.D. Newman: It went over well with the brethren in my lodge.
00:24:57.700 --> 00:25:01.720 P.D. Newman: But yeah, that's how I started writing, and how I began exploring…
00:25:02.470 --> 00:25:17.019 P.D. Newman: Not just masonry, but ascent motifs in various traditions, soul ascent models, and the mechanism that was relied on to affect those ascents.
00:25:17.020 --> 00:25:35.450 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I know that they've found recently that in some ancient Roman or ancient Greek clay pots, they found evidence of ergo, which is the mold that grows on rye that LSD was extracted from.
00:25:35.500 --> 00:25:38.400 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, I know there's a lot of theories that
00:25:38.630 --> 00:25:53.380 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: the use of psychedelics in the West, not just in the indigenous cultures in South America, where we know it goes back at least 3,000 years, but in the West, that there's also indications that psychedelic use has been present
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:59.460 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: For thousands of years. I'm curious, because you've taken a very…
00:26:00.280 --> 00:26:13.990 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: in your first couple of books, a very Western approach to it. How far back have you found evidence or indications that there might have been the use of psychoactive plants, going back how far?
00:26:16.070 --> 00:26:29.059 P.D. Newman: Well, if we accept Kluver's idea, Kluver… he… he was injecting himself with mescaline, eventually. First, he was taking peyote.
00:26:29.060 --> 00:26:29.589 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But he.
00:26:29.590 --> 00:26:46.809 P.D. Newman: was charting the phenomenology of the visual aspect of it. And he arrived at these four geometric motifs that he calls form constants. And eventually, an archaeologist, Lewis Williams.
00:26:47.190 --> 00:26:53.780 P.D. Newman: Postulated that these constitute the first in his three stages of trance model.
00:26:54.160 --> 00:27:02.260 P.D. Newman: So it's inherent in psychedelics, especially serotonergics, anything like LSD, psilocybin, DMT, mescaline.
00:27:03.150 --> 00:27:06.150 P.D. Newman: So, if we are looking for…
00:27:07.890 --> 00:27:11.759 P.D. Newman: Variations on his form constants in ancient art.
00:27:12.670 --> 00:27:22.589 P.D. Newman: then that… we could take that, and it has been taken as evidence that psychedelic use goes back to the dawn of man, qua man.
00:27:22.590 --> 00:27:23.440 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm….
00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:26.210 P.D. Newman: to the very earliest days.
00:27:26.370 --> 00:27:29.570 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Which, which makes sense. It's only natural that….
00:27:29.570 --> 00:27:33.040 P.D. Newman: If something was stumbled upon, that…
00:27:36.130 --> 00:27:42.670 P.D. Newman: That opened the world in a way. Opened it like a door and allowed them to see
00:27:43.170 --> 00:27:56.269 P.D. Newman: You know, we can only speculate about how they would have interpreted it, but there's no question that they would push that button again and again, have someone else, hey, come here, push this button, tell me what happens.
00:27:56.270 --> 00:27:57.139 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah, yeah.
00:27:57.140 --> 00:28:04.019 P.D. Newman: I think it would be the only thing worth exploring once you got your hands on something like fire and a blade, you know?
00:28:04.020 --> 00:28:20.669 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right, right, right. Yeah, and, you know, me and some of my friends, we kind of jokingly refer to the burning bush as an acacia bush, and… It is. Yeah, which was an acacia bush, and how Moses
00:28:21.370 --> 00:28:25.339 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Father or father-in-law was an acacia tree farmer.
00:28:26.200 --> 00:28:39.690 P.D. Newman: When it says burning bush, the actual words are lebacena, which means glowing acacia. Senna is Hebrew for acacia, and it's even the root word for Sinai.
00:28:39.900 --> 00:28:43.719 P.D. Newman: So, when he encounters the fire on Mount Sinai.
00:28:43.890 --> 00:28:53.780 P.D. Newman: It's like a fractal of the bush, but the word is taken from the same thing. So when he comes down and it says that he was horned.
00:28:53.780 --> 00:29:04.799 P.D. Newman: You know, in the King James Version, it's translated as, he had rays of light coming off of his face. But the actual word is a word that means he had horns coming off of his face.
00:29:05.050 --> 00:29:05.670 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Which is….
00:29:05.670 --> 00:29:13.519 P.D. Newman: very similar to how indigenous shamans will make themselves consubstantial with the sacrament. They'll dress up.
00:29:13.520 --> 00:29:13.910 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: up as the.
00:29:13.910 --> 00:29:15.450 P.D. Newman: Amanita Muscaria, right?
00:29:15.450 --> 00:29:16.120 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: and he's.
00:29:16.120 --> 00:29:25.359 P.D. Newman: coming down with thorns. And in Greek, we think about Jesus with the crown of thorns. What it says is a crown of acanthenon.
00:29:25.470 --> 00:29:35.139 P.D. Newman: acanthus is… acacia is… that's why they call it acacia, because it's thorned. So it's… it's inherent in the language itself.
00:29:35.320 --> 00:29:45.830 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wow, wow, that's fascinating, that's fascinating. You know, it's so funny how all of this stuff is, like, right there in front of us.
00:29:46.050 --> 00:29:51.770 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But unless you know to look for it, you don't see the subtle.
00:29:51.800 --> 00:30:00.220 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: connections to these different plants and in these different cultures, so that's really fascinating.
00:30:00.220 --> 00:30:10.760 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You know, I want to take our next break now, and when we come back, I want to start getting into tripping the trail of ghosts and the things that you found out about the Native Americans
00:30:10.760 --> 00:30:21.220 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: in your neck of the woods, in Mississippi and the Southeast, because you found out some pretty interesting things that I don't think are very commonly known.
00:30:21.930 --> 00:30:22.830 P.D. Newman: Let's do it.
00:30:22.830 --> 00:30:42.409 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: All right, so everyone, please stay tuned. You are listening to The Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity. We're speaking this hour with P.D. Newman, author of the book, Tripping the Trail of Ghosts, Psychedelics and the Afterlife Journey in a Native American Mound Cultures, and we will be right back to get into the book.
00:32:50.640 --> 00:32:59.829 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, PD, your latest book is called Tripping the Trail of Ghosts, Psychedelics and the Afterlife Journey in Native American Mound Cultures.
00:33:00.070 --> 00:33:12.760 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And this book is more focused on the local Indigenous cultures around Mississippi and the Southeast. What got you to decide to focus on that for your latest book?
00:33:13.670 --> 00:33:15.869 P.D. Newman: That's a good question. So, …
00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:21.579 P.D. Newman: The book I had published previously was my book on theurgy, which is, …
00:33:21.730 --> 00:33:32.440 P.D. Newman: ritual application of Platonic metaphysics. And in this, they have a model of soul ascent, where they imagine that there are portals in certain constellations.
00:33:32.440 --> 00:33:45.569 P.D. Newman: And the soul can go through those portals to access the Milky Way, which is, ever since the days of Pythagoras, is where they say that the souls, prior to and after incarnation, orbit this Milky Way.
00:33:45.800 --> 00:33:46.350 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh.
00:33:46.350 --> 00:33:54.410 P.D. Newman: So I was telling, … I was at a conference in Yorkshire, called the Tearingham Initiative, and…
00:33:54.880 --> 00:34:06.359 P.D. Newman: Brian Murarescu, the author of The Immortality Key, he was there, and he has a classical education, so I was telling him about my book on theurgy, and exactly what I just told you.
00:34:06.600 --> 00:34:17.850 P.D. Newman: And nearby us were Dennis McKenna and Graham Hancock having a private discussion, but they were close enough to be in earshot of what Brian and I were discussing.
00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:27.150 P.D. Newman: And Graham turned around, and he said, oh, you're talking about the path of souls. And I said, no, I'm talking about theurgy, Neoplatonic.
00:34:27.159 --> 00:34:42.980 P.D. Newman: ritual application of platonic metaphysics, you know. And he says, well, everything you just said is exactly what happens in the path of souls model, this afterlife journey inherent in Southeastern Native Americans. And I said, …
00:34:43.020 --> 00:34:48.340 P.D. Newman: well, then I got to know more about that. And so I… before I even came home, I got on…
00:34:48.400 --> 00:34:57.009 P.D. Newman: Amazon and found this book by a man, Gregory Little, brilliant guy, that just happened to be an hour from me in Memphis, Tennessee.
00:34:57.780 --> 00:35:05.909 P.D. Newman: By the time I got home, the book was there, I read it, I was blown away. And what really caught my attention
00:35:06.340 --> 00:35:09.100 P.D. Newman: Were all of the places that
00:35:09.480 --> 00:35:16.590 P.D. Newman: Needed to be investigated further to determine whether or not psychedelics were involved, because there were a lot of clues that there were.
00:35:16.590 --> 00:35:17.030 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm.
00:35:17.860 --> 00:35:35.010 P.D. Newman: And that's what really started me down this journey, was… was, first off, how can these two models be the same if there's no known communication between the isolationism argument we get from mainstream archaeology? The Greeks never talked to
00:35:35.380 --> 00:35:44.919 P.D. Newman: the Native Americans in the Southeast, how can the models be the same? So that was the first interesting thing. The second was…
00:35:45.140 --> 00:35:58.139 P.D. Newman: Studying the botanical assemblages recovered from the mound sites, and just being taken aback by the number of psychoactive compounds that all of these mound sites had in common.
00:35:58.140 --> 00:36:10.229 P.D. Newman: And it opened an entire domain of research that has really just been neglected, I think, mainly because nobody knows to look at it. They just assume we know what they were up to.
00:36:10.530 --> 00:36:24.850 P.D. Newman: And like you said in the introduction, you know, when we think about Native Americans and psychoactive plants, our brain goes to peyote and tobacco. Now, peyote didn't make it to the Southeast until….
00:36:24.850 --> 00:36:26.630 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right, because it's a desert plant, yeah.
00:36:26.630 --> 00:36:30.520 P.D. Newman: Right, it was a southwestern, native practice.
00:36:30.670 --> 00:36:36.949 P.D. Newman: in the southeast, so what were they using? Well, they were using tobacco, they were using nicotina rustica.
00:36:37.140 --> 00:36:38.020 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: ….
00:36:38.400 --> 00:36:39.120 P.D. Newman: But…
00:36:39.850 --> 00:36:51.970 P.D. Newman: What also was uncovered, and that was really fascinating, is they have this ritual practice, it's called black drink. Casina is the common word they would use. Some of the tribes would use, not all of them.
00:36:52.020 --> 00:37:01.269 P.D. Newman: But it's also called black drink, and it's made from a species of holly, the yawpon holly, which is Ilex vomitoria.
00:37:01.270 --> 00:37:05.510 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Now, the botanist classified it as Baumatoria.
00:37:05.510 --> 00:37:11.699 P.D. Newman: Because the natives were observed drinking it, and vomiting, and drinking it again, and vomiting.
00:37:11.700 --> 00:37:12.830 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh. And….
00:37:13.220 --> 00:37:21.749 P.D. Newman: So my initial thought was, well, it must be an emetic, but I won't know unless I try it. And it grows all around our.
00:37:21.750 --> 00:37:25.660 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: lake out here, so I harvested it, roasted the leaves.
00:37:25.660 --> 00:37:37.850 P.D. Newman: made… several batches of varying concentrations, drank various amounts. It's the only native source of caffeine in North America.
00:37:37.890 --> 00:37:49.159 P.D. Newman: So it'll give you caffeine jitters, but at no point did it act as an emetic. I never felt nauseous, so that raised the question of why are they vomiting?
00:37:49.930 --> 00:37:50.660 P.D. Newman: it.
00:37:50.660 --> 00:37:51.490 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm.
00:37:51.630 --> 00:38:00.280 P.D. Newman: And that's when I found that the recipe changed based on the context in which they were drinking it.
00:38:00.710 --> 00:38:08.330 P.D. Newman: And that opened the door to saying, okay, what else were they boiling with the Ilex vomitoria?
00:38:08.510 --> 00:38:20.989 P.D. Newman: And the most fascinating answer was the roots of Gladizia triacanthos, which was previously classified as Acacia Americana.
00:38:21.730 --> 00:38:25.200 P.D. Newman: Now, given my previous research into Freemasonry, I thought.
00:38:25.630 --> 00:38:34.459 P.D. Newman: Oh, they're boiling the roots of an acacia. The roots are where the molecule, where the alkaloid, occurs, and these… most of these trees
00:38:35.680 --> 00:38:41.600 P.D. Newman: And Gladizia triacanthus grows all around here. But it's puzzling because.
00:38:41.600 --> 00:38:50.939 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: its distribution far exceeds what should be natural. All of the animals that fed on these trees, on the seed pods, and thus spread them.
00:38:50.940 --> 00:38:53.969 P.D. Newman: are extinct. They have no animals feeding on them.
00:38:54.310 --> 00:39:04.190 P.D. Newman: For thousands of years. And yet, in the Southeast, their distribution is so dense that.
00:39:04.190 --> 00:39:04.670 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm.
00:39:04.670 --> 00:39:09.650 P.D. Newman: We know that it's because the natives were cultivating them intentionally.
00:39:09.850 --> 00:39:10.690 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm….
00:39:10.690 --> 00:39:19.559 P.D. Newman: And so, this led to me thinking, okay, well, if that's… if they're… they have the DMT, where's the MAOI? Because when we're talking about ayahuasca.
00:39:19.640 --> 00:39:33.580 P.D. Newman: We need an MAOI in most cases. Not every case, because some trees, like Durima Prata, the mimosa hostilus, there are ways to prepare it without it that's active. But in most cases, I need to prove that there's an MAOI.
00:39:33.640 --> 00:39:43.269 P.D. Newman: And among these botanical assemblages were Passiflora incarnata, passionflower, which contains harmin, so we know they had that.
00:39:43.460 --> 00:39:52.019 P.D. Newman: Nicotiana rustica, their tobacco, contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and then the big clincher was that
00:39:52.250 --> 00:40:00.470 P.D. Newman: The black drink itself, the Yalpan Holly, is a cousin to Yerba mate, which has monoamine oxidase inhibitors in it.
00:40:00.470 --> 00:40:01.230 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Mmm….
00:40:01.230 --> 00:40:08.049 P.D. Newman: Although mixing these plants, which we have ample evidence that they were, would result in
00:40:08.850 --> 00:40:26.859 P.D. Newman: a nearly identical analog to ayahuasca, yet it's in southeastern North America, beginning around 1000 AD. You know, it's… it changes everything we thought we knew about the natives in this area.
00:40:27.130 --> 00:40:36.999 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right, right, right. And isn't that fascinating that even though it's a different combination of plants of what they use in South America.
00:40:37.110 --> 00:40:56.190 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But it's something that creates the same kind of experience. And so, while we tend to think of ayahuasca as a purely South American concoction, that there are analogs to it in North America as well.
00:40:56.650 --> 00:41:00.600 P.D. Newman: Right, right. And if it's something they had inherited.
00:41:00.980 --> 00:41:04.809 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: from South America, because we know that, like, like, ….
00:41:05.570 --> 00:41:16.820 P.D. Newman: cacao, chocolate. We know that it made it all the way up from South America into Chaco Valley in southwest, north of North America.
00:41:17.080 --> 00:41:18.380 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right. ….
00:41:18.380 --> 00:41:22.589 P.D. Newman: So we know that things can get from there to here.
00:41:22.750 --> 00:41:27.949 P.D. Newman: But if this had been something that had come from there, we would expect to see
00:41:28.240 --> 00:41:44.220 P.D. Newman: Secotria veridis, or Diplopteris cabirana, or Banisteriopsis copy, all these plants they use in South America to produce ayahuasca, we would expect to see them here, but we don't. So just like their afterlife model, it seems to be an independent discovery.
00:41:44.220 --> 00:41:44.860 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Overall.
00:41:44.860 --> 00:41:58.709 P.D. Newman: Something that raises the question of, are we dealing with, you know, objective truths here that we've just completely lost sight of as we focus more and more on positivism and materialism and.
00:41:58.710 --> 00:41:59.320 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah.
00:41:59.620 --> 00:42:00.700 P.D. Newman: Etc, you know?
00:42:00.700 --> 00:42:10.910 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Have you been able to talk with any descendants of the tribe to see if there's any oral tradition around this?
00:42:10.920 --> 00:42:21.300 P.D. Newman: Well, we have… we have evidence in the Bureau of… the Bureau of Ethnology's reports from the Smithsonian.
00:42:21.540 --> 00:42:34.440 P.D. Newman: Where they would speak to natives then, and they would tell stories. And a number of these stories involved them taking the roots of the honey locust and boiling them in a big pot, and they had a ball game that they
00:42:34.830 --> 00:42:41.299 P.D. Newman: play that influenced our modern ball games. Before they played, they would take the roots and chew them.
00:42:41.530 --> 00:42:52.490 P.D. Newman: And spit the juice out and rub it on their bodies. Now, the DMT isn't orally active, remember, but it is absorbable transdermally, and they would.
00:42:52.490 --> 00:42:53.030 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh.
00:42:53.030 --> 00:42:58.510 P.D. Newman: juices and rub it all over their bodies before playing this ball game. So there are lots of… of…
00:42:58.830 --> 00:43:03.770 P.D. Newman: incidents in the ethnographies. The only native that I've spoken with
00:43:04.160 --> 00:43:09.149 P.D. Newman: is an elder of, the Omaha and,
00:43:09.950 --> 00:43:15.319 P.D. Newman: I believe he's an elder of two different tribes, but his name's Taylor Keene. He published a book
00:43:16.130 --> 00:43:22.729 P.D. Newman: within our traditions on Turtle… Turtle Island, the prehistorical myths of North America.
00:43:22.730 --> 00:43:23.780 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right.
00:43:23.780 --> 00:43:30.280 P.D. Newman: And he fully ascribes to what I'm saying. He says that there is a lot of…
00:43:31.330 --> 00:43:37.250 P.D. Newman: evidence now that these things have survived, but the contexts have changed.
00:43:37.250 --> 00:43:38.069 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: That turned….
00:43:38.100 --> 00:43:49.549 P.D. Newman: Datura was being used by them in conjunction with these other plants to cause out-of-body experiences as a way to train them how to get to the path of souls.
00:43:49.550 --> 00:43:50.090 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: ….
00:43:50.090 --> 00:43:52.819 P.D. Newman: In a psychedelic way, right?
00:43:53.420 --> 00:44:13.400 P.D. Newman: But he says they still use Datura, but not in that way. They use it more to heal, like, as a poultice, which it's very effective that way for bruising and sprains. So they still have a lot of it, but the… just like with anything, the context changes over time with the cultural values.
00:44:13.400 --> 00:44:16.509 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah, yeah, wow, wow, wow.
00:44:17.340 --> 00:44:18.250 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: …
00:44:21.160 --> 00:44:29.299 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I, like, have so many questions swirling around in my mind, it's hard to limit them, because we don't have a lot of time.
00:44:30.380 --> 00:44:40.959 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, so this is an, things that you found locally, and as you mentioned, the trees, are not, …
00:44:41.100 --> 00:44:54.900 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Indigenous or the animals that would spread, the seeds of the trees are not around, haven't been around for a long time, but there's tons of the trees around, and…
00:44:55.380 --> 00:44:59.789 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And nobody has found this connection before, there hasn't been anyone
00:45:00.160 --> 00:45:05.600 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: To look at the fauna of the area and wonder, like, why is this the case?
00:45:05.610 --> 00:45:08.010 P.D. Newman: They… they've… there's been one…
00:45:08.260 --> 00:45:27.260 P.D. Newman: researcher that I know of that has noted the odd distribution of the plants, and he came to the same conclusion that these must have been cultivated for some reason, but he didn't have that answer. Right. Now, the thing with Gladizia triocanthos
00:45:27.940 --> 00:45:42.099 P.D. Newman: having the tryptamine alkaloid in it, it's not widely known, because it's not published in any research journal. It's not in any academic studies. It was only published in one source that, if you weren't
00:45:42.100 --> 00:46:05.159 P.D. Newman: already running and reading in psychedelic circles, you wouldn't know about, but it was a man who called himself Keeper of the Trout, and he published a book called Some Simple Tryptamines, and he was a scientist, and he had… he noticed the similarity between things like mimosa hostilis, between acacia species, and Anadenthera species that produce the yopo, the snuff.
00:46:05.160 --> 00:46:06.729 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh, yeah.
00:46:06.730 --> 00:46:12.320 P.D. Newman: All had the same, by the same pinout, pinnate leaf…
00:46:12.670 --> 00:46:27.180 P.D. Newman: pinate compound leaf structure. So he noticed that and started saying, well, let's look at other species that have the same pinnate compound leaf structure, and Willis say it. He chemically tested it and found that DMT was in the roots.
00:46:27.180 --> 00:46:28.440 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm.
00:46:28.930 --> 00:46:36.249 P.D. Newman: that's the only place it's published. So unless you know to look there, the other academic researchers wouldn't know to ask that question.
00:46:36.250 --> 00:46:36.900 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But of course.
00:46:36.900 --> 00:46:42.169 P.D. Newman: I believe in testing it. Take it to the bench, find out.
00:46:42.400 --> 00:46:50.450 P.D. Newman: So, you know, one of the first things on my list was to… let's try to reproduce it, just like it did with the black drink. Let's test it.
00:46:50.640 --> 00:46:59.490 P.D. Newman: And I quickly found that 10 grams of the root bark, paired with roughly 25 grams of passionflower.
00:46:59.490 --> 00:47:11.190 P.D. Newman: is enough to elicit a full-on ayahuasca-like experience. It was profound, visionary, and quite frankly, scary at moments.
00:47:11.190 --> 00:47:12.320 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But… but….
00:47:12.320 --> 00:47:19.249 P.D. Newman: That's what you expect. You want… it tests your limits. It takes you beyond your comfort zone.
00:47:19.410 --> 00:47:21.760 P.D. Newman: But it's absolutely effective.
00:47:22.060 --> 00:47:23.180 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wow, wow.
00:47:23.330 --> 00:47:32.289 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Okay, it's time for us to take our last break of the show, but when we come back, I want to circle back around to the Trail of Ghosts, or the Path of Souls.
00:47:32.330 --> 00:47:43.790 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And, sort of, how does all this psychedelic use tie back into, sort of, the spiritual nature of the indigenous cultures, and how it all works together, okay?
00:47:44.200 --> 00:47:45.179 P.D. Newman: Sounds great.
00:47:45.180 --> 00:47:56.869 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful. So everyone, please stay tuned. You're listening to the Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity, and we'll be right back to wrap it all up with our guest, P.D. Newman, in just a moment.
00:49:45.310 --> 00:49:46.970 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, PD, the…
00:49:47.140 --> 00:49:57.980 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: The name of your most recent book is Tripping the Trail of Ghosts, and you mentioned before about the path of souls.
00:49:57.980 --> 00:50:08.170 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, what is the Trail of Ghosts, and how does all these psychedelic brews relate to, sort of, the spiritual practices of the indigenous cultures?
00:50:08.760 --> 00:50:10.559 P.D. Newman: That's another good question.
00:50:11.150 --> 00:50:24.160 P.D. Newman: So the Trail of Ghosts is just another name that is applied to the Path of Souls. They both refer to the Milky Way as this road that souls walk.
00:50:24.390 --> 00:50:29.900 P.D. Newman: Now, among the Southeastern natives, the Mississippians.
00:50:30.460 --> 00:50:41.689 P.D. Newman: this wasn't common knowledge. This was initiated wisdom. So, the chief, the medicine man, we could call him, the nobles.
00:50:42.420 --> 00:50:51.479 P.D. Newman: they were initiated into what's known as a sodality, a secret society that taught this. So not everyone
00:50:51.810 --> 00:50:58.319 P.D. Newman: would get to go on the path of souls and lead to the equivalent of the happy hunting ground, right?
00:50:58.320 --> 00:50:58.840 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm.
00:50:58.840 --> 00:51:00.909 P.D. Newman: In the other, other realm.
00:51:01.070 --> 00:51:06.660 P.D. Newman: And the way they would teach this was by degrees, very similar to Freemasonry.
00:51:06.660 --> 00:51:07.440 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Mmm.
00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:21.080 P.D. Newman: Each degree of teaching covered a certain amount of territory on the path. So you didn't get it all at once, you got it over time, and the level at which you were
00:51:21.780 --> 00:51:22.610 P.D. Newman: was…
00:51:22.760 --> 00:51:37.569 P.D. Newman: carved into sometimes a gorget, a shell-carved image. Also, they would drink this brew from large lightning whelk shells, and the images would be carved on these shells, and we know that
00:51:37.620 --> 00:51:50.739 P.D. Newman: from the ethnographies that these shells were buried with their possessors because they quite literally identified with them. This is my level of knowledge, and it also spoke to the other people
00:51:50.820 --> 00:51:54.390 P.D. Newman: in the tribe. They know this is your rank
00:51:54.700 --> 00:51:56.970 P.D. Newman: in a society I don't belong to.
00:51:56.970 --> 00:51:58.040 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right?
00:51:58.040 --> 00:52:07.270 P.D. Newman: Kind of like when somebody says, oh, he's a 33rd degree Mason, but they're not a Mason, but they still have this suspicion, this respect, this…
00:52:07.490 --> 00:52:10.059 P.D. Newman: You know, fascination with….
00:52:10.380 --> 00:52:11.240 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: That person.
00:52:11.520 --> 00:52:12.880 P.D. Newman: Very similar to that.
00:52:16.070 --> 00:52:24.509 P.D. Newman: The way they taught it, was using the mound sites themselves. We know from…
00:52:24.910 --> 00:52:35.910 P.D. Newman: researchers that have paired stories of, say, Makwa, Makwa Menito and the Ojibwe. Makwa is this bear divinity that brought them
00:52:36.020 --> 00:52:47.859 P.D. Newman: these sacred packs that contained all of the things they needed to perform certain rituals. And his journey is a sacred journey that they imitate ritually.
00:52:47.920 --> 00:52:52.369 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And it was discovered that the mound sites, many of them.
00:52:53.310 --> 00:53:06.339 P.D. Newman: the landmarks are all in the same place to where Bear's journey took what he encountered, mythically, that they reenact. So the mound sites become a virtual training ground for the
00:53:06.970 --> 00:53:09.309 P.D. Newman: the path of souls itself.
00:53:09.500 --> 00:53:18.659 P.D. Newman: But it wasn't just a ritual they performed, it was used in conjunction with these psychedelics, so that they would have
00:53:18.890 --> 00:53:22.090 P.D. Newman: Also have first-hand experience of what it's like to be
00:53:22.590 --> 00:53:29.320 P.D. Newman: Sometimes outside of your body, sometimes, you know, to be immersed in both places at once.
00:53:29.860 --> 00:53:31.740 P.D. Newman: But that's how they would use it.
00:53:32.000 --> 00:53:37.409 P.D. Newman: And it wasn't until… Much later, when Moundville in Alabama became
00:53:38.010 --> 00:53:42.599 P.D. Newman: a necropolis. Natives from all over the Southeast would travel
00:53:43.330 --> 00:53:53.690 P.D. Newman: hundreds, thousands of miles to bring their dead there. And it's because the sodality had opened their doors in a way to allow other people
00:53:54.040 --> 00:54:11.980 P.D. Newman: even though they hadn't been initiated, to get on the path of souls. We see something similar in ancient Egypt, right? Where only the Pharaoh is the one that travels up, because he has the pyramid text. Unus has the secret in the pyramid, but by the time anybody got in that pyramid, they copied that down into…
00:54:12.560 --> 00:54:22.870 P.D. Newman: coffin texts, and then anybody who could afford it could have the same thing painted on the inside of their coffin. And then we get the Books of the Dead. If you can afford it, you can have one, right?
00:54:22.870 --> 00:54:23.250 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm.
00:54:23.250 --> 00:54:25.770 P.D. Newman: So it's kind of like that. For a fee.
00:54:25.950 --> 00:54:38.359 P.D. Newman: one of these individuals that were initiated into the path of souls and the trials, because you had various beings you encountered, and similar to Gnosticism, you had to know what to do to get past them.
00:54:38.750 --> 00:54:39.980 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm….
00:54:39.980 --> 00:54:42.610 P.D. Newman: They would act as a psychopomp.
00:54:42.880 --> 00:54:58.070 P.D. Newman: You know, the family would bring the remains of their deceased relative or friend, pay these shamans to enact this ritual, and go with them to make sure their soul made it on the path of souls.
00:54:58.070 --> 00:55:01.220 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh, wow, wow, wow.
00:55:01.590 --> 00:55:18.699 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: This is such a fascinating topic. I could talk with you about this for days. Unfortunately, we're coming to the end of the show. I'm just curious, are you already on to your next research topic? Are you working on your next book already?
00:55:18.910 --> 00:55:21.450 P.D. Newman: I am. I'm working on 3 books, ….
00:55:21.450 --> 00:55:21.900 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wow.
00:55:21.900 --> 00:55:31.089 P.D. Newman: One of them is a follow-up to my Theurgy book, which is more of a look at a program of reading that would accompany
00:55:31.270 --> 00:55:37.189 P.D. Newman: The practice of theurgy in ancient times, ancient, … well, in late antiquity.
00:55:37.760 --> 00:55:43.109 P.D. Newman: I'm working on a book on the Tarot de Marseille, the, the variations of, of
00:55:43.400 --> 00:55:45.929 P.D. Newman: the old Italian-French tarot.
00:55:46.420 --> 00:55:52.319 P.D. Newman: … And then I've got a third book that is looking at the… the…
00:55:52.510 --> 00:55:57.520 P.D. Newman: References and applications of these various same psychoactive compounds
00:55:57.690 --> 00:56:02.960 P.D. Newman: In the grimoires, in the magical grimoires tradition, as a way to try and understand
00:56:03.440 --> 00:56:12.600 P.D. Newman: How they were obtaining certain results, and whether or not it's consistent with the phenomenology of that particular substance they're using in that context.
00:56:12.720 --> 00:56:20.090 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Gotcha. Wow, fascinating, fascinating. All right, we'll definitely have you come back on this show when you get those books out to talk about them, okay, PD?
00:56:20.090 --> 00:56:21.740 P.D. Newman: Anytime. Thank you for having me.
00:56:21.740 --> 00:56:33.410 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh, it's been a pleasure, it's been a pleasure. If people want to… I know your… Tripping the Trail of Ghosts is available at all major booksellers. Do you have your own website, if people want to learn more about you and your work?
00:56:33.410 --> 00:56:40.489 P.D. Newman: I have one being prepared. I have a consulting company called Helios Consulting LLC, and I'll use that to also
00:56:41.130 --> 00:56:59.749 P.D. Newman: post-research papers, but it's in the works. But if anybody wants to reach out to me, you can reach me under P.D. Newman at all the social media platforms. I really just, you know, talk about what I'm researching, and I rarely get to talk about it, so if you've got any questions, feel free to reach out.
00:57:00.090 --> 00:57:15.480 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, PD, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come on board. I really look forward to reading your book and learning more about all of this. I find it so incredibly fascinating.
00:57:15.920 --> 00:57:16.970 P.D. Newman: Thank you, Sam.
00:57:17.000 --> 00:57:41.090 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And of course, thank you, my loyal listeners, for tuning in each week. I did see, Steel Media commenting on YouTube. Oh, really? I think we kind of shocked them. But thank you for tuning in each week. Without you, there is no show. And don't forget, if you did miss any part of today's show, you can always catch the replay on talkradio.nyc and all over social media on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter.
00:57:41.090 --> 00:57:42.579 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: LinkedIn and Twitch.
00:57:42.750 --> 00:57:47.649 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Thank you all for tuning in. We will talk to you all next week.
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