Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold graduated with a degree in psychology, anthropology/science of religion, and cinema studies from the University of Oslo and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. He owns the Sacred Alchemy Store and the retreat center the Monastery of St. Uriel the Archangel. He has been living in Brazil since 2003, where he has dedicated much of his time to studying, both as a practitioner and as an ethnographer, the varieties of Brazilian spirituality and sorcery.