Of the seven founding members, senior Hamilton Brewer was recognized as primus inter pares behind the establishment of the society.

The members met each week at their meeting space in the furnished attic of Wesleyan's North College.

at Trinity (1829), and Skull and Bones at Yale (1832), were other nearby non-Greek inspired college fraternities.

"Never have I seen anything so original, so quaint, so completely unique, or irresistible in its solemn humor, as the Mystical Seven initiation and the ceremonies of its meetings.

"[2]: 16  A similar commentator noted that the Mystical Seven, "in some respects [was] among the most ambitious efforts at creating a college secret society with a good ritual.

"[5]: 356 The Mystical Seven also had a serious academic and philosophical aspect, including public events like bringing Ralph Waldo Emerson to speak at the campus, or later Orestes Brownson, whose address to the society was later published as "Social Reform: An Address Before the Society of the Mystical Seven".

[3] Henry Branham brought the society from Wesleyan to Emory, and there interested the president of the university, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, the humorist author of Georgia Scenes, in membership.

The Georgia temple (at what was then known as Franklin College) was founded by George McIntosh Troup Hurt, a Mystic alumnus of Emory.

Those that merged into other organizations are noted in bold, temples that went dormant without merger are listed in italics.

[7] There appears never to have been a connection between the Wesleyan Mystics and the identically named and much later formed local honor society (1907) at the University of Missouri.

The resemblances of the ceremonies of the two societies "cannot be given at length; but they leave little room for doubt that...the Heptasophs or Seven Wise Men...is an indirect descendent of the Mystical Seven college fraternity," according to one source.

In 1867, a petitioning group for a Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter claimed initiation into the Mystical Seven for the purposes of securing a ΔΚΕ charter, which was successful.

Much work was employed in reconstructing the practices of the original society including the addition of much written material from several sources.