Cressida Stone, author of Secrets of Santa Muerte, is an English writer. The author leads a double life as a British doctor of anthropology trained in classic methods at the University of Oxford, while also moving in occult circles as Cressida Stone, publishing grimoires on Santa Muerte, practicing witchcraft, and reading tarot cards for the wealthy elite, the disenfranchised, and sicarios alike. She has apprenticed in Mexico with brujos (witches) and shamans of Santa Muerte at temples to the Saint of Death, learning their ways of working with the folk saint. She embraces a non-dualistic philosophy of life and death.