Customer Reviews

The Gospel of the Toltecs: The Life and Teachings of Quetzalcoatl

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Those of you who are looking pure information without too much commentaries and cheap talk, this is good book.

I was looking for the information about this legend in as original way as possible. With every retelling we lose something and every writer will add something from the self so original information will be less and less.
There are commentaries also in this book- some very valuable and helpful in understanding the topic, some little distracting as they represent somebodies point of view, just the way they accept it.

So if you are interested about Quetzalcoatl I would recommend this book at first and then the others. By the way there are graphic illustrations from codices by every fiew page. Yes, good book.

The author has gone back to original sources to produce this fascinating book of insight into the origins of Quetzalcoatl and Toltec wisdom. If you're interested in those sources this is a good place to start.

Well written book broken into numbered sections. Great recount of the Feathered Serpents childhood, his parents, and early education. Enjoyed the life and teachings and the commandments chapter.

As the review of Carole Zureick was written in response to the editorial reviews (specifically the review by the Library Journal), I write this review in response to the review of Carole Zureick. Carole takes issue with the criticism found in the Library Review Journal, especially the portion that states that Frank Diaz "provides no introduction or other background information describing the organization of the work, his purpose in writing it, or his own research methods. The text is presented completely without context, and the bibliographic references are incomplete." Carole argues that the writer of this review apparently is looking for a product of Academia. She suggests products of Academia are not needed by those who are intimate spiritual seekers. She suggests that no other book depicts Mesoamerican religions so intimately. For Carole to argue in favor of this hypothesis, she must be confident that the sources Frank Diaz has used are genuine.

I am a spiritual seeker who is interested in the Toltec, their beliefs and spiritual tools. I have not read this book in its entirety, though I took extensive advantage of the "Surprise Me" function provided by Amazon to peruse a great deal of this text. In this text, I find something that I want to add to my library. However, I hesitate. I hesitate because I am not convinced that Frank Diaz has used legitimate resources to "reconstruct" the teachings of Quetzalcoatl. I am not convinced because Frank Diaz does not describe his research methods (in other words, does not tell us in an introduction how he wrote this book, and why it is a significant contribution to our knowledge). I am not convinced because Frank Diaz does not provide complete bibliographic references.

For example, at the end of a very interesting chapter on the teachings of Quetzalcoatl, we are told the source is "huehuetlahtolli". We are told nothing else about this source here. It cannot be said there is only one huehuetlahtolli. There are multiple huehuetlahtolli. In the Bibliography at the end of the book, we find in the bibliographic list, an incomplete reference to "Huehuetlahtolli de Padre Olmos". Are we to believe this is the huehuetlahtolli to which Frank Diaz refers? Perhaps this is the source, but that is left to our imagination. If we are to believe this is the source, could Frank Diaz please tell us where this source is located? If we are to have faith that the work presented here is worthy of our consideration, we should be given sufficient information by the author to enable us to examine the source document ourselves. Frank Diaz does not provide us with this information.

Please look at works by Miguel Leon-Portilla. Miguel Leon-Portilla's interpretation of Nahuatl spirituality has its supporters and detractors. But at least all of us who are interested in the topic can look at the same source documents and fashion our arguments based on those source documents. Frank Diaz does not allow us to consider his work in a similar fashion.

I think it is very possible this book presents material that is located in actual source documents. But at this point, I fear that basing your religion of Frank Diaz's "Gospel of the Toltecs" is similar to basing your beliefs on Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code".