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

Ptolemy Tompkins’s spellbinding plunge into the history and meaning of Mesoamerican civilizationsfirst published a decade agois 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.