The review is devoted to developement and applications of the so-called non-commutative Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory (NCRSPT). As opposed to the standard RSPT used for taking into account weak interorbital interactions, the NCRSPT is aimed to account for weak interactions inside and between entire subsets of basis functions of arbitrary dimensions separated by substantial energy gaps. Accordingly, this new PT is formulated in terms of multidimensional (non-commutative) quantities, including row-matrices of basis functions corresponding to individual subsets and the so-called eigenblocks playing the role of eigenvalues. When discussing applications, the principal attention is paid to the perturbative version of the non-canonical theory of molecular orbitals based on the Brillouin theorem.