This Tree Grows Out of Hell: Mesoamerica and the Search for the Magical Body [Hardcover]

Ptolemy Tompkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1990

An investigation into the history, archaeology and mythology of ancient Mesoamerica, in order to understand the motivations that lay behind the building of pyramidal cities and bizarre rituals. The author dismisses New Age ideas about the origin and nature of these societies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (December 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062508660
• ISBN-13: 978-0062508669
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,515,865 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ptolemy Tompkins is the author of Paradise Fever (a memoir focusing on the years in the mid-seventies when his father, Secret Life of Plants author Peter Tompkins, became obsessed with finding the lost continent of Atlantis in the waters off Florida), The Beaten Path (an examination of the good and not-so-good things that happen when one takes the teachings of popular modern wisdom authors like Alan Watts and Carlos Castaneda too seriously) and This Tree Grows Out of Hell (a spiritual history of the Maya and Aztec cultures focusing on their disturbing preoccupation with bloodshed). For just under ten years he was an in-house editor at Guideposts and Angels On Earth, and is currently a contributing editor at both magazines. It was while working at Guideposts and Angels that he got the idea for his most recent book, The Divine Life of Animals, which examines the question of whether animals have souls from a perspective inclusive enough that (he hopes) a wide range of readers (that is, not just Christians, not just New Agers, etc) will be able to take its arguments seriously. He writes a monthly column for Beliefnet.com, and is currently working on a book about the afterlife of humans.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A keen insight into Mesoamerican culture, March 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: This Tree Grows Out of Hell: Mesoamerica and the Search for the Magical Body (Hardcover)

It isn't often that you read a book that so deftly communicates the cosmic framework of an ancient culture. However, it is obvious that Tompkins' take on the archeological evidence of ritual and religion left by the Olmecs, Aztecs and Mayans is written within the framework of modern culture. Of course, any academic will translate an ancienct culture of which he has no first hand knowledge via his own ideologies, so it is silly to critique it, as the other reviewer has, in such a way. This book is a refreshing look at religion and spirituality in mesoameria, and is a good resource for anyone seeking knowledge about shamanism as well.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating., January 30, 2006

By 

David Edward Ludd (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Tree Grows Out of Hell: Mesoamerica and the Search for the Magical Body (Hardcover)

This is a brilliant book. I've re-read it many times. A previous reviewer wrote that he did a net search on the author and discovered he was a "70's guru." Not so. His father was the weird one. His son, the author of this book, is a respected scholar.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Soft-Headed PC "Editorial Review" Above, July 14, 2008

By 

J. M. Dawson "Some call me Corby" (Charlottesville, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: This Tree Grows Out of Hell: Mesoamerica & the Search for the Magical Body (Living Planet Book) (Paperback)

I'm astonished by the political correctness of the main editorial review at the top of this page. It suggests that the book was written to be a mirror on the modern day, that we have much to learn from ancient mesoamerican culture.

Make no mistake, this is an excellent book. But what it really shows us is the depths of horror and depravity that was pre-conquest mesoamerican culture. The Aztecs were monsters, but their only invention was in the refining of the horrors the Mayans, whom they conquered from within.

The author provides details of the depravity of the Aztecs. This is not a book for the squeamish.

One of the key points of this book is that all the client peoples of the Aztecs hated the Aztecs so much that the moment a new power (the Spanish) arrived, the subject people flocked to them because they simply could not imagine any other situation that could be worse than life under the Aztecs. And no, I'm not an apologist for the Spanish--neither am I willing to excuse the brutal, homicidal native culture that thankfully is gone now.