PDF This Tree Grows Out of Hell: Mesoamerica the Search for the Magical Body (Living Planet Book) by Ptolemy Tompkins in History

Review

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Mystical origins of Aztec ritual violenceBy cave dwellerThere could hardly be a culture more obsessed with violence and death than the Aztecs. This book sets out to find recognizable spiritual motivations for violent practices that could easily be written off as just insane. Foremost is the suggestion that the Aztecs; like most ancient peoples; longed for a lost spiritual 'golden age'; which for them might have entailed direct experience of intense shamanic trance states. Perhaps they experienced something similar to the phenomenon of ‘shamanic dismemberment’ that Mircea Eliade documented in various other cultures; but after losing access to this experience the Aztecs began to re-enact it in physical form as human sacrifice. Another suggestion is that the Aztec empire sought a state of perpetual warfare as a way to maintain each warrior’s awareness of imminent death in order to give life the otherworldly intensity that they all craved. One or two pop-culture references are made; so I'll make one of my own: the Aztecs are portrayed here as a sort of ‘Fight Club’ culture writ large; intentionally crashing their civilization and proclaiming; “We just had a near-life experience!”0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Honestly conveys a gruesome culture that revolved around human sacrificeBy Richard KoenigsbergA 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..com/Nations-Have-Right-Kill-Holocaust/dp/091504223115 of 19 people found the following review helpful. Soft-Headed PC "Editorial Review" AboveBy Impeach DrumpfI'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.