Exploring psychedelic spiritual practices and afterlife beliefs among the Mississippi mound cultures

• Examines the Path of Souls or Trail of Ghosts, a Native American model for the after-death journey

• Demonstrates how psychoactive plants were used to evoke the liminal state between life and death in initiatory rites and spirit journeys

• Explores the symbology of the large earthwork mounds erected by the Indigenous people of the Mississippi Valley and how they connect to the Path of Souls

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 the majority 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.

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. He explores the earthwork and platform mounds built by Indigenous cultures of the Mississippi Valley, showing how they quite likely served as early models for the Path of Souls. He also explores similarities between the Ghost Trail afterlife journey and the well-known Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead.

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 and Angels in Vermilion, he lives in Tupelo, Mississippi, with his wife, Rebecca, and his youngest son, Bacchus.

Foreword by Christine VanPool

PREFACE
Finding the Path of Souls

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION
Meet the MIIS-sissippians

ONE
Native American Intoxicants

TWO
A Cavern of Sacred Visions

THREE
A Finger Pointing at the Cahokia Moon

FOUR
A Lodge of Spirits at Spiro

FIVE
Lost Marbles at Etowah

SIX
The Necropolis of Moundville

SEVEN
Magic Plants and Shamanism in the MIIS

EIGHT
The Missihuasca Hypothesis

Closing Remarks

APPENDIX
The Legend of Miskwedo
by Keewaydinoquay Pakawakuk Peschel

Notes
Bibliography
Index