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Ptolemy Tompkins
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This Tree Grows Out of Hell: Mesoamerica and the Search for the Magical Body Paperback – March 4, 2008

by Ptolemy Tompkins (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
Ptolemy Tompkins's spellbinding plunge into the history and meaning of Mesoamerican civilizations?first published a decade ago?is more compelling now than ever. Combining scholarly knowledge with visionary perception and sensitivity, he examines the Mayan, Aztec, and other related cultures from the perspective of that region's shifting understanding of the human soul. A profoundly spiritual and ecological thread runs through this enlightening work like a river: despite their amazing achievements, these civilizations eventually crumbled because they lost touch with their sense of community, their true natures, and their environments. Above all, Tompkins vividly reveals how violence became a deeply flawed but powerful strategy for accessing the ever-retreating realm of the spirit, which had once guided and directed human life.

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  1. Print length
    207 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Union Square & Co.
  4. Publication date
    March 4, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1402748825
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1402748820
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Union Square & Co.
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 4, 2008
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Revised
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 207 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1402748825
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1402748820
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

About the author

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Ptolemy Tompkins

Ptolemy Tompkins

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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 magazines. His work there led him to writing The Divine Life of Animals and The Modern Book of the Dead, a duo of books arguing for the continuing validity of the human belief in postmortem survival. The Modern Book of the Dead in turn led him to Dr. Eben Alexander, with whom he collaborated on the bestselling Proof of Heaven and The Map of Heaven.

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Richard Koenigsberg
    5.0 out of 5 stars Honestly conveys a gruesome culture that revolved around human sacrifice
    Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2016
    A great book. Honestly conveys the horrors of Aztec society--their compulsion to suffer. Why do human beings create such societies, so destructive and self-destructive. Western people have their own Sacrificial Rituals, however we barely recognize them as sacrificial rituals. A good example is the First World War. See my analysis of how nations sacrifice their own people in NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL: https://www.amazon.com/Nations-Have-Right-Kill-Holocaust/dp/0915042231
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Impeach Drumpf
    4.0 out of 5 stars Soft-Headed PC "Editorial Review" Above
    Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2008
    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.
    19 people found this helpful
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  • David Edward Ludd
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating.
    Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2006
    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.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • "egonz"
    1.0 out of 5 stars The Fall as interpreted by Shirley McClown
    Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2004
    I am half way from completing this book and I can not read any further. I began to notice a nagging sense of moral superiority from the author that I found objectionable. The author constantly compares the Mayas and the Aztecs to other shamanistic cultures and each time points out how the shamanistic society was obviously superior. I thought it was odd early on when he routinely quoted from books that discussed Eskimo and Sioux shamans. I was confused as to what this had to do with Mesoamerican religion and culture. Granted they are all Native Americans, but this book claimed to concern itself only with Mesoamerica. He also spent much of the book expressing how the mistake of the Mesoamericans was in their building of cities, that this represented a Fall from the Eden of the shamanistic society. After becoming fed up with this tripe I did a search online for the author and I learned that according to one description he was "one of the most colorful gurus of the '70s' New Age movement". I finally fully comprehended why I hated this book so much.
    8 people found this helpful
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