Ptolemy Tompkins is an American writer, author of Paradise Fever: Dispatches from the Dawn of the New Age and a senior editor at Guideposts Magazine.

Biography

Tompkins was born in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, educated at Sarah Lawrence College

Sarah Lawrence College

Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...

, and currently lives in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. He is the son of best-selling occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

 writer Peter Tompkins

Peter Tompkins

Peter Tompkins was an American journalist, World War II Office of Strategic Services spy in Rome, and best-selling occult author....

, author of The Secret Life of Plants

The Secret Life of Plants

The Secret Life of Plants is a book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, described as "A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man."...

. Paradise Fever, his 1997 memoir, chronicles his childhood in the early seventies, focusing on the time his father spent searching for Atlantis in the waters off Bimini in the Bahamas. His latest book, The Divine Life of Animals (Crown, 2010), is an examination of how peoples around the world have viewed the animal soul through history, and an enquiry into whether it is still possible to think of animals as genuinely ensouled beings today.
Other books include The Beaten Path: Field Notes on Getting Wise in a Wisdom-Crazy World (William Morrow, ISBN 978-0380978229), The Monkey in Art, and This Tree Grows Out of Hell (Sterling, ISBN 978-1402748820), a spiritual history of Mesoamerica heavily influenced by the thinking of Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber

Kenneth Earl Wilber II is an American author who has written about mysticism, philosophy, ecology, and developmental psychology. His work formulates what he calls Integral Theory. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute, for teaching and applications of Integral theory.-Biography:Ken Wilber was...

 and Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic.Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a 1st class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became the book Poetic...

. Tompkins is currently writing a book on geographies of the afterlife.

His mother is Jeree Talbot Smith Tompkins. Siblings include sister Robin Tompkins Ray of Nassau, Bahamas and brother Timothy Christopher (T.C.) Tompkins.