William Walker Atkinson
Pioneer of the New Thought movement
Born	(1862-12-05)December 5, 1862 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died	November 22, 1932(1932-11-22) (aged 69) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Pen name	Theron Q. Dumont Yogi Ramacharaka
Occupation	Author hypnotist
Signature

William Walker Atkinson (December 5, 1862 – November 22, 1932) was an American attorney, publisher, author, and pioneer of the New Thought movement. He is the presumed author of the pseudonymous works attributed to Theron Q. Dumont and Yogi Ramacharaka.^[1]

He wrote an estimated 100 books, all in the last 30 years of his life. He was mentioned in past editions of Who's Who in America, in Religious Leaders of America, and in similar publications. His works have remained in print more or less continuously since 1900.^[2][3]

William Walker Atkinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 5, 1862,^[4] to Emma and William Atkinson. He began his working life as a grocer at 15 years old. He married Margret Foster Black of Beverly, New Jersey, in October 1889, and they had two children. Their first child died young. The second later married and had two daughters.^[5][6]

Atkinson pursued a business career from 1882 onwards and in 1894 he was admitted as an attorney to the Bar of Pennsylvania. While he gained much material success in his profession as a lawyer, the stress and over-strain eventually took its toll, and during this time he experienced a complete physical and mental breakdown, and financial disaster. He looked for healing and in 1900 he found it with suggestive therapeutics, later attributing the restoration of his health, mental vigor and material prosperity to the application of the principles of New Thought.^[5][6]

By the early 1890s, Chicago had become a prominent center for the New Thought movement, largely due to the early influence of Emma Curtis Hopkins and later the Chicago School of Psychology run by Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn.

In the spring of 1900, Atkinson disappeared from Philadelphia without any word to his family or colleagues and arrived at the daily free clinic operated by Dr. Parkyn at his Chicago School, seeking treatment for nervous prostration. He remained there for six weeks under Dr. Parkyn’s care. Upon his reappearance, he told the press that he had no clear recollection of his whereabouts during his absence, aside from a vague impression of having been in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Atkinson relocated permanently to Chicago with his wife and child.^{[7][5][8][9][10][6]}

Following his move, Atkinson spent several months studying directly under Dr. Parkyn. During this time, Atkinson underwent full training in Parkyn’s system of suggestive therapeutics and became aligned with the broader effort to establish the legitimacy of the Law of Suggestion. His background in legal debates as an attorney, combined with strong writing and organizational skills, led Parkyn to invite him to contribute to Suggestion.^[12][13][14]

Over several months, Parkyn gradually introduced a more metaphysical interpretation of the mental sciences into his magazine through the writings of Atkinson, assigning him unsigned editorial pieces that integrated his voice into the journal. Parkyn positioned Atkinson as a strategic addition to the broader effort to extend suggestive therapeutics into everyday life. In addition to being an effective writer who attributed personal benefit to Parkyn’s methods, Atkinson brought professional experience in corporate law and financial risk assessment.^[15][16]

The training in both Parkyn's clinical applications and occult theories would shape Atkinson's future writings and establish many of the core beliefs and methods he would continue to promote throughout his career. Atkinson would become a close life long collaborator with Dr. Parkyn and emerge as one of his most visible protégés.^[15][16]

In December 1900, Atkinson's first published work on New Thought appeared in Suggestion magazine under the title "The Law of Mental Control." This would be a series of four articles with the titles "The Functions of the Mind," "The Real Self," "Character Building by Mental Control," and "I Can and I Will." This series presented Dr. Parkyn's main concepts behind the field of suggestive therapeutics and would soon be expanded into the book, A Series of Lessons in Personal Magnetism, Psychic Influence, Thought-Force, Concentration, Will-Power and Practical Mental Science. The ideas in this series and the following book created the foundation for the teachings and methods that would define Atkinson's writing career, and was the key to his rise to prominence within the New Thought movement.^{[17][18][19][20][21]}

Atkinson’s role in Suggestion was to extend the application of Parkyn’s Law of Suggestion beyond clinical treatment and into self-culture, thought-force, and psychic phenomena, presenting the system in terms familiar to metaphysically inclined readers. In doing so, he translated suggestive therapeutics into the language of New Thought while directing that audience toward disciplined and demonstrable methods rather than speculative or sensational.^{[22][23][24][25]}

In 1901, Atkinson was appointed the first instructor at Parkyn's newly established University of Psychic Science. Under Parkyn's direction, Atkinson offered series of lessons at the university that blended practical psychology with the emerging theories of vibration, thought-transference, and mental polarity. The material that Parkyn and Atkinson developed for these lectures was compiled into the book A Series of Lessons in Personal Magnetism, published through Parkyn's University of Psychic Science with Atkinson listed as the author. This was the first book issued by William Walker Atkinson and marked the beginning of his long literary career in psychological and metaphysical studies. Parkyn shortly afterwards retitled the book as Thought=Force in Business and Everyday Life to reach a broader readership.^{[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]}

• 
  William Walker Atkinson at Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn's University of Psychic Science
• 
  Thought = Force in Business and Everyday Life by William Walker Atkinson

In February 1901, Atkinson formally assumed the title of associate editor. During his year and half tenure at Suggestion, Parkyn framed Atkinson’s presence within the magazine as part of a distinct New Thought voice, promoting what Parkyn termed as "Atkinsonia." This branding presented Atkinson's contributions as a defined intellectual current within the journal, cultivating an atmosphere that suggested participation in a specialized body of New Thought teaching.^[35][36]

Through Suggestion's wide-reaching promotional campaigns highlighting Atkinson’s lectures, courses, and books, Atkinson was established as a prominent figure within the mental science and New Thought community. Suggestion's strong editorial influence across the psychical science press further elevated Atkinson to a position of leadership that other journals respected and emulated.^[37][36]

In November 1901, Parkyn brought Atkinson together with his longtime protege, Sydney B. Flower, to establish New Thought magazine. Flower had worked with Parkyn for several years as his business manager and publicist, as well as editor of The Hypnotic Magazine, and secretary of the Chicago School of Psychology. The new journal would fully shift emphasis from clinical instruction to the metaphysical and philosophical foundations of the mental sciences, presenting its material in the language of the New Thought movement.^{[38][39][40][41][32]}

In December, 1901 he assumed editorship of New Thought magazine, a post which he held until 1905. During these years he built for himself an enduring place in the hearts of its readers with article after article flowing from his pen. Meanwhile, he also founded his own Success Circle and briefly ran his Atkinson School of Mental Science. Both were located in the same building as the Psychic Research Company and New Thought Publishing Company.^[42][43]

Atkinson wrote under many pseudonyms and false personas. His work was released by a series of publishing houses with shared addresses, and these personas wrote for a series of magazines with a shared roster of authors, all edited by Atkinson. His pseudonymous authors acted first as contributors to the periodicals and were then spun off into their own book-writing careers, with most of their books being released by Atkinson's own publishing houses^[44]

The magazine Advanced Thought, billed as A Journal of The New Thought, Practical Psychology, Yogi Philosophy, Constructive Occultism, Metaphysical Healing, Etc. was edited by Atkinson, and advertised articles by Atkinson and Theron Q. Dumont—the latter two were later credited to Atkinson—and had the same address as The Yogi Publishing Society, which published the works attributed to Yogi Ramacharaka. Advanced Thought carried articles by Swami Bhakta Vishita, but when it came time for Vishita's writings to be collected in book form, they were not published by the Yogi Publishing Society. Instead they were published by The Advanced Thought Publishing Co., the same house that brought out the Theron Q. Dumont books and published Advanced Thought.^[44]

He was responsible for helping to publish the magazines Suggestion (1900–1901), New Thought (1901–1905) and Advanced Thought (1906–1916).^[45] Atkinson was a past president of the International New Thought Alliance.^[46]

In 1919 the United States Post Office Department investigated Atkinson's "Advanced Thought Publishing Company" and the "Yogi Publishing Company," both operating out of the Masonic Temple in Chicago. The inquiry focused on allegations of misleading advertising and potentially fraudulent use of the mail for the sale of metaphysical books, pseudonymous authorship, and the accuracy of promotional materials, particularly those related to health and astrology.^[47][48]

Inspectors raised concerns about several promotional items, including an astrological device called the Planetary Hour Indicator and the book Private Sex Lessons of a Physician, citing exaggerated claims and vague authorship. Testimony revealed that the Yogi Publishing Company had been founded by William Walker Atkinson and unnamed associates and was later sold to Mrs. Ollie Gould, who had previously worked with Sidney B. Flower. The figure "Yogi Ramacharaka" was identified by inspectors as a pseudonym, and Mrs. Gould confirmed that the name did not refer to an actual individual but was used for a series of books authored by Atkinson and unnamed associates. Inspectors also questioned the provenance of other pseudonymous works, such as Zodiac Mysteries, Sex Force, and Secret Doctrines of the Rosicrucians, and noted that authorship and publication information was frequently withheld or misrepresented in correspondence.^[47]

The case was settled with the promise to revise promotional materials, cease distributing contested items such as the Planetary Hour Indicator, and remove references to health remedies in future publications.^[47]

In the 1890s, Atkinson became interested in Hinduism. After 1900, he promoted yoga and Oriental occultism in the West.^[44]

Atkinson claimed to have an Indian co-author, which was common among the New Thought and New Age writers of his era, who often embraced a vaguely exotic theme of "orientalism" in their writings and credited Hindus, Buddhists, or Sikhs with possession of special knowledge and secret techniques of clairvoyance, spiritual development, sexual energy, health, or longevity.^[49][a]

Atkinson started writing a series of books under the name Yogi Ramacharaka in 1903, ultimately releasing more than a dozen titles under this pseudonym. The Ramacharaka books were published by the Yogi Publication Society in Chicago and reached more people than Atkinson's New Thought works did.^[44]

Atkinson created two more Indian personas, Swami Bhakta Vishita and Swami Panchadasi. Neither of these identities wrote on Hinduism, instead focusing on divination and mediumship, including "oriental" forms of clairvoyance and seership. Of the two, Swami Bhakta Vishita was more popular, and with more than 30 titles to his credit, he eventually outsold the Yogi Ramacharaka persona.^[44]

During the 1910s, Atkinson created another persona, that of Theron Q. Dumont. This entity was supposed to be French, and his works, written in English and published in Chicago, combined an interest in New Thought with ideas about the training of the will, memory enhancement, and personal magnetism.^{[citation needed]}

In 1903, the same year that he began his writing career as Yogi Ramacharaka, Atkinson was admitted to the Bar of Illinois.^[44]

In addition to writing and publishing a steady stream of books and pamphlets, Atkinson started writing articles for Elizabeth Towne's New Thought magazine Nautilus, as early as November 1912, while from 1916 to 1919, he simultaneously edited his own journal Advanced Thought. During this same period he also found time to assume the role of the honorary president of the International New Thought Alliance.^[44]

Among the last collaborators with whom Atkinson may have been associated was the mentalist C. Alexander, "The Crystal Seer," whose New Thought booklet of affirmative prayer, Personal Lessons, Codes, and Instructions for Members of the Crystal Silence League, published in Los Angeles during the 1920s, contained on its last page an advertisement for an extensive list of books by Atkinson, Dumont, Ramacharaka, Vishita, and Atkinson's possible collaborator, the cult leader and self styled spiritual authority on occultism, L. W. de Laurence.^{[47][original research?]}

Atkinson died November 22, 1932, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 69.^[44]

Atkinson was a prolific writer whose books achieved wide circulation among New Thought devotees and occult practitioners. He published under several pen names, including Magus Incognito, Theodore Sheldon, Theron Q. Dumont, Swami Panchadasi, Yogi Ramacharaka, Swami Bhakta Vishita, and probably other names not identified. He is also popularly held to be one (if not all) of the Three Initiates who anonymously authored The Kybalion.^[44]

A major collection of Atkinson's works is among the holdings of a Brazilian organization called Circulo de Estudos Ramacháraca. According to this group, Atkinson has been identified as the author or co-author (with individuals such as Edward E. Beals and Lauron William de Laurence) of 105 separate titles. These can be broken down roughly into the following groups:^[51]

These works treat themes related to the mental world, occultism, divination, psychic reality, and mankind's nature. They constitute a basis for what Atkinson called "New Psychology" or "New Thought". Titles include Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, and Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing: A Course of Lessons on the Psychic Phenomena of Distant Sensing, Clairvoyance, Psychometry, Crystal Gazing, etc..

Although most of the Atkinson titles were published by Atkinson's own Advanced Thought Publishing Company in Chicago, with English distribution by L. N. Fowler of London, England, at least a few of his books in the "New Psychology" series were published by Elizabeth Towne in Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts, and offered for sale in her New Thought magazine The Nautilus. One such title, for which Atkinson is credited as the author, with the copyright internally assigned to Towne, is The Psychology of Salesmanship, published in 1912. The probable reason that Atkinson made an assignment of copyright to Towne is that his "New Psychology" books had initially been serialized in Towne's magazine, where he was a freelance writer from 1912 at least through 1914.^{[citation needed]}

These include Atkinson's teachings on Yoga and Oriental philosophy, as well as New Thought and occult titles. They were written in such a way as to form a course of practical instruction.

Yogi Ramacharaka titles

When Atkinson wrote under the pseudonym Yogi Ramacharaka, he claimed to be a Hindu. As Ramacharaka, he helped to popularize Eastern concepts in America, with Yoga and a broadly-interpreted Hinduism being particular areas of focus. The works of Yogi Ramacharaka were published over the course of nearly ten years beginning in 1903. Some were originally issued as a series of lectures delivered at the frequency of one lesson per month. Additional material was issued at each interval in the form of supplementary text books.^{[citation needed]}

Ramacharaka's Advanced Course in Yoga Philosophy and Oriental Occultism remains popular in some circles.

According to Atkinson's publisher, the Yogi Publication Society, some of these titles were inspired by a student of the "real" Yogi Ramacharaka, Baba Bharata, although there is no historical record that either of these individuals ever existed.^{[citation needed]}

Swami Bhakta Vishita titles

Atkinson's second Hindu-sounding pseudonym, Swami Bhakta Vishita, billed as "The Hindoo Master" did not write on the topic of Hinduism. His best-known titles were "The Development of Seership: The Science of Knowing the Future; Hindoo and Oriental Methods" (1915), "Genuine Mediumship, or Invisible Powers", and "Can We Talk to Spirit Friends?" Atkinson produced more than two dozen Swami Bhakta Vishita books, plus a half-dozen saddle-stitched paper pamphlets under the Vishita name. All of them dealt with clairvoyance, mediumship, and the afterlife. Like Ramacharaka, Vishita was listed as a regular contributor to Atkinson's Advanced Thought magazine, but his books were published by the Advanced Thought Publishing Company, not by the Yogi Publication Society, which handled the Ramacharaka titles.^{[citation needed]}

Swami Panchadasi titles

The work that Atkinson produced under his third Hindu-sounding pseudonym, Swami Panchadasi, failed to capture a wide general audience. The subject matter, clairvoyance and occult powers, was not authentically Hindu, either.

Theron Q. Dumont titles

As Theron Q. Dumont, Atkinson stated on the title pages of his works that he was an "Instructor on the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, Paris, France"—a claim manifestly untrue, as he was an American living in the United States.

The Atkinson titles released under the Dumont name were primarily concerned with self-improvement and the development of mental will power and self-confidence. Among them were Practical Memory Training, The Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, The Power of Concentration, and The Advanced Course in Personal Magnetism: The Secrets of Mental Fascination, The Human Machine', Mastermind.^{[citation needed]}

Theodore Sheldon titles

The health and healing book, Vim Culture has often been attributed to William Walker Atkinson. Theodore Sheldon does not appear to be the same person as T. J. Shelton, who (like Atkinson) wrote on subjects related to health and healing for The Nautilus magazine and was also one of several honorary presidents of the International New Thought Alliance. Discovery of a 1925 letter from Theodore Sheldon to Florence Sabin of Johns Hopkins University provides evidence of Theodore Sheldon's existence as an actual person, apart from William Walker Atkinson. The original copy of this letter was located in Florence Sabin's university archives and makes reference to Ms. Sabin as Theodore Sheldon's childhood teacher from "the banks of Lake Geneva," which is important biographical data about an otherwise unknown writer. While it's possible that Atkinson could have been a ghost writer or contributor to Sheldon's work, the personal nature of Sheldon's correspondence with Florence Sabin would have been very difficult for Atkinson to fabricate, suggesting that Theodore Sheldon was more than an Atkinson pen name.

Magus Incognito titles

The Secret Doctrines of the Rosicrucians by Magus Incognito consisted of a nearly verbatim republication of portions of The Arcane Teachings, an anonymous work attributed to Atkinson (see below).

Three Initiates

Ostensibly written by "Three Initiates," The Kybalion was published by the Yogi Publication Society.

With Edward Beals, which may have been another pseudonym, Atkinson wrote the so-called "Personal Power Books"—a group of 12 titles on humanity's internal powers and how to use them. Titles include Faith Power: Your Inspirational Forces and Regenerative Power or Vital Rejuvenation. Due to the lack of information on Edward Beals, many believe this is also a pseudonym.

With his fellow Chicago resident L. W. de Laurence he wrote Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing. L.W. de Laurence was an incredible character himself, publisher and author of dozens of "occult" books that had a tremendous influence in many African and Caribbean countries, to the point that, to this day, they are banned in Jamaica.

A series named The Arcane Teaching is also attributed to Atkinson. Significant portions of material from The Arcane Teaching were later re-worked, appearing nearly verbatim in The Secret Doctrines of the Rosicrucians by Magus Incognito (yet another Atkinson alias).^{[citation needed]}

Nothing is known of the first edition of The Arcane Teaching, which apparently consisted of a single volume of the same name.

The second edition was expanded to include three 'supplementary teachings' in pamphlet form. The four titles in this edition were: The Arcane Teaching (hardback), The Arcane Formulas, or Mental Alchemy (pamphlet), The Mystery of Sex, or Sex Polarity (pamphlet), and Vril, or Vital Magnetism (pamphlet). This edition was published by A. C. McClurg—the same publisher who brought out the Tarzan the Ape-Man series by Edgar Rice Burroughs—under the "Arcane Book Concern" imprint, and the name of the publisher, A. C. McClurg, doesn't actually appear anywhere upon the books in this edition. The series bears a 1909 copyright mark, listing the copyright holder as "Arcane Book Concern". There also appears to have been a pamphlet entitled Free Sample Lesson which was published under the "Arcane Book Concern" imprint, indicating that it may have appeared concurrently with this edition.

The third edition split the main title, The Arcane Teaching, into three smaller volumes, bringing the total number of books in the series to six. This edition consisted of the following titles (the three titles marked with an asterisk (*) are the volumes that had appeared together as The Arcane Teaching in the previous edition): The One and the Many* (hardback), Cosmic Law* (hardback), The Psychic Planes* (hardback), The Arcane Formulas, or Mental Alchemy (binding unknown), The Mystery of Sex, or Sex Polarity (binding unknown), and Vril, or Vital Magnetism (binding unknown). The third edition of The Arcane Teaching was published by A. C. McClurg under its own name in 1911. The books in this series bear the original 1909 copyright, plus a 1911 copyright listing "Library Shelf" as the new copyright holder.^{[citation needed]}

Because Atkinson ran his own publishing companies, Advanced Thought Publishing and the Yogi Publication Society, and is known to have used an unusually large number of pseudonyms, other authors published by those companies may also have been his pseudonyms:

• A. Gould and Dr. Franklin L. Dubois (who co-wrote The Science of Sex Regeneration c. 1912);
• Frederick Vollrath (who contributed articles on the subject of "Mental Physical-Culture" to Atkinson's Advanced Thought magazine);
• O. Hashnu Hara. Although is hard to find concrete evidence, the first clue is always the impossibility to find information about the writer, other than the fact that he wrote books published by Atkinson. Books under this name include Practical Yoga, Concentration, and Mental Alchemy, all books with titles similar to other Atkinson's books.

For ease of study, this bibliography of the works of William Walker Atkinson is divided into sections based on the name Atkinson chose to place on the title page of each work cited.

Bibliography of Atkinson writing as William Walker (or W. W.) Atkinson

Bibliography of Atkinson writing as Yogi Ramacharaka

Bibliography of Atkinson writing as Swami Bhakta Vishita

Bibliography of Atkinson writing as Swami Panchadasi

Bibliography of Atkinson writing as Theron Q. Dumont

Bibliography of Theodore Sheldon (possibly an Atkinson pseudonym)

• Vim Culture.

Bibliography of "Three Initiates" (possibly an Atkinson pseudonym)

• The Kybalion Yogi Publication Society. 1908.

Bibliography of Atkinson writing as Magus Incognito

• The Secret Doctrines of the Rosicrucians. 1918.

Bibliography of Atkinson writing with co-authors

Bibliography of anonymous works attributed to Atkinson

• Works by William Walker Atkinson at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Theron Q. Dumont at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Walker Atkinson at the Internet Archive
• Works by or about Theron Q. Dumont at the Internet Archive
• Works by or about Yogi Ramacharaka at the Internet Archive
• Works by William Walker Atkinson at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Who was Yogi Ramacharaka?
• Círculo de Estudos Ramacharaca
• Who was William Walker Atkinson
• 1925 Letter from Theodore Sheldon to Florence Sabin
• Swami Panchadasi material in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)

• Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World by William Walker Atkinson – free online edition
• Practical Mental Influence by William Walker Atkinson – free online edition
• Practical Mind Reading by William Walker Atkinson – free online edition
• The Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Theron Q. Dumont free online edition
• Science of Breath by Yogi Ramacharaka free online edition
• The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath by Yogi Ramacharaka— Read Online
• The Yogi Philosophy by Yogi Ramacharaka free online edition
• Gnani Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka— Read Online
• Hatha Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka free online edition
• Raja Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka— Read Online
• Upasika: Texts in Spanish
• The Kybalion Resource Page – features online versions of The Kybalion
• The Arcane Teaching