As much as I may respect the author for her Psychic Vampire Codex, this did not impress me much at all. It seems like Belanger has been bitten by the Llewellyn Cultural Appropriation and fluff bug, much to my disappointment. While some attention in this work was paid to various different burial traditions, these were then mashed together with little regard to cultural seperation.

The idea of the visualizations where the practicioner's body is destroyed in different ways is interesting, and I have to admire Belanger's creativity there. However it is a very poor idea for a Left Hand Path practicioner of a school of magic such as Ordo Sekhemu to even consider such a ritual, unless they do so in order to overcome such decay and destruction. The meditation wherein one imagines one's face decaying too could have very negative effects on someone with a low self image, such as many teens who may be drawn to this book.

In my opinion, this work would have been much better if you didn't have watered down versions of the Tibetan Book of the Dead next to a "medicine bag" of items from a graveyard. I also personally feel that shamanic initiation should involve some kind of actual risk or challenge, not just a visualization. The destruction of the Heart Scarab at the end of the final rite also worries me from a magical perspective, as that could cause damage to the practicioner if taken to to great an extreme.

In all, I would classify this on the same page as Konstantinos's fluffy dark wicca books. Honestly I regret buying this one new and wish I had waited to read more of it before spending the money. ( )