THE series of sketches which are now brought together appeared originally as detached articles in the pages of the Theosophical Review, written, however, with the object of demonstrating to students of Theosophy that a definite design could be traced beneath the apparently disconnected mystic doctrines held by the many occult brotherhoods, heretic sects and mystic associations which cluster so thickly together as we glance along the historical by-ways of religious thought during the Middle Ages.