Filan writes for readers outside Haiti who want to serve the lwa on their own, and he is candid about the ceiling: no book makes anyone a houngan or mambo, and a serious student will eventually need a societé and a teacher.

The advice is practical and cautionary. The lwa are presented as powerful and easily offended rather than as forces to be summoned on demand; taboos are to be kept, the hotter spirits left to the experienced, and a space cleansed beforehand so that tricksters cannot pass themselves off as spirits or ancestors. Bad luck, in this reading, signals neglect rather than any danger in the involvement itself.

An opening section places the religion inside Haitian history — ceremonies suppressed under slavery, Freemasonry's mark on the secret societies, Makandal and Boukman — before later parts explain who does what at a ceremony and give instructions for shrines, offerings, vessels and the individual lwa a beginner may safely approach.