Nothing is known about Julio Ribas del Rio's life except that he spent part of it at the Juquery Psychiatric Hospital in Brazil.

The text describes ceremonies blending Candomblé ritual, the main Afro-Brazilian religion, alchemy, and the author's hallucinatory visions.

This work was part of the former collection of the Brazilian psychiatrist Osorio Cesar.

A psychiatrist at the Juquery Hospital in São Paulo, Osorio Cesar was the first Brazilian researcher to analyze the art of the mentally ill. A pioneer in the use of art in psychiatry, he maintained a regular correspondence with Freud and published "Primitive Art of the Insane" in 1924, which, like Prinzhorn's book published three years earlier, played a crucial role in recognizing the art of the mentally ill not as case studies but as works of art. His entire collection has belonged since 1985 to the museum dedicated to him in Franco da Rocha.