Raymund Andrea, was Grand Master of the Rosicrucian Order for the British Isles from 1921 to 1946. He was a man of high learning and deep spiritual devotion who imparted through his many books, pamphlets and essays, writings of great spiritual value to a searching humanity.

The present book is a collection of essays that the author wrote during the worrisome months just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Each essay delves into the life of an eminent literary figure of the past who, quite apart from mastering the art of writing, also conveyed clear signs of spiritual aspiration of the sort found only in the lives of eminent mystics and spiritual leaders.
The author portrays these six men as the fallible humans they were, but also brings out the Light of spiritual understanding and deeper purpose they all sought. Although they fought for a better world, some of their actions were by our modern standards less than admirable. But if we pause to reflect a while we may realise that our past incarnations may well have been cast in precisely the periods encompassed by the lives of some of these great men. We may well have walked among them, maybe even known them well; yet almost certainly we accomplished a great deal less than they did. Only exceptionally few among us will leave for posterity a literary and mystical heritage comparable to that left by the these six men, and above all by the author Raymund Andrea himself.