The Figures
William Walker Atkinson
William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932) was a Baltimore-born lawyer who became one of the most prolific writers of the American New Thought movement in Chicago, editing New Thought magazine (1901-1905) and publishing over a hundred books. Many appeared under pen names: he put Yogi Ramacharaka on record himself, and from 1912 his Who’s Who in America entry also lists The Kybalion (1908) among the works he published anonymously.
William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932) was a Chicago lawyer turned New Thought writer who published over a hundred books, under his own name and under invented ones such as Yogi Ramacharaka. He is remembered today mainly through one anonymous book of 1908, The Kybalion, which he listed among his works in his own Who’s Who in America entry. This page is about the man: what the reference books of his lifetime record, how his writing career was built, which pen names are tied to him by what kind of evidence, and where the documents stop. The book itself, its seven principles and where to read it are covered on the Kybalion page.
What the record of his lifetime says
The most solid biographical source is the one Atkinson helped write. Who’s Who in America printed an entry on him from at least the 1910-1911 volume, and the historian Philip Deslippe, whose 2019 article is cited below by page alone, notes that Atkinson submitted his own entries to such reference books (Deslippe 2019, p. 65). The entry therefore records what he wanted known, which is also what makes it useful: it is his own claim, in print, in his lifetime.
According to the 1910-1911 entry, he was born in Baltimore on 5 December 1862, the son of William C. and Emma L. (Mittnacht) Atkinson, was educated in public schools, and married Margaret Foster Black, of Delanco, New Jersey (Beverly in the 1912 and 1916 volumes), on 31 October 1889. He spent 1882-1894 “in commercial life”, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1894 and to the Illinois bar in 1903, was associate editor of Suggestion (Chicago, 1900) and editor of New Thought (Chicago, 1901-1905) (Who’s Who in America, vol. 6, 1910-1911, pp. 56-57). His home and office were in Chicago.
Deslippe, who edited the 2011 Tarcher/Penguin edition of The Kybalion, adds what a reference book leaves out. Atkinson’s father and grandfather kept grocery stores; he suffered a breakdown at twenty-one, read Theosophy, studied law from 1893, and built a practice in Pennsylvania until a refused transfer of his credentials and a second breakdown ended it. He then moved his family to Chicago and became a full-time writer (pp. 63-64). These details are his research, not documents we have seen.
A writer of New Thought
New Thought, in Deslippe’s short definition, is “a web of beliefs and practices that hold that one’s thoughts affect health, well-being and circumstances” (p. 64). It grew in American cities at the turn of the twentieth century, among office workers and salesmen who had, as Deslippe puts it, little more than their thoughts and desires to work with (p. 64). Atkinson was one of its most productive voices.
His first books appeared under his own name with small Chicago houses. The Law of the New Thought (1902) carries “By William Walker Atkinson, associate editor of ‘New Thought,’ Chicago” on its title page and was published by the Psychic Research Company, 3835 Vincennes Avenue (scan). Thought Vibration, or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World was copyrighted in 1906 by the New Thought Publishing Company (scan of a 1908 printing); the phrase “law of attraction”, now attached to a large self-help market, is in its subtitle. The site’s date-check tool uses that 1906 book as the earliest dated source for the idea in its modern form.
With Atkinson as editor, the circulation of New Thought magazine doubled and doubled again; its manager Sydney Flower later drew a federal fraud order that stopped the magazine’s use of the mail just before Christmas 1904, and Atkinson left for Southern California a few months later, stating in print that he had nothing to do with the “business side” (pp. 64-66). From 1916 he edited Advanced Thought, owned by “the same couple who ran the Yogi Publication Society”, and for some issues wrote nearly all of the copy that was not advertising (pp. 67-68). The couple is not named, so this page does not call the press his own.
Atkinson’s view of New Thought is the part that matters for the Hermetic story. He did not treat it as new: he saw it as the latest form of a long line of systems reaching back to ancient India, and he liked to describe the universe as a set of laws, a habit traced to his years as a lawyer (p. 64). Both habits, the long lineage and the language of law, return in The Kybalion.
The names he wrote under
Atkinson used more than a dozen pen names, according to Deslippe, who reads them as a practical device: each name tends to go with one publisher and one period, which let a very fast writer publish with several companies at once without flooding the market (p. 65). The evidence that ties each name to him is not of one kind, and the table keeps the kinds apart.
| Name (example) | What ties it to Atkinson | Status |
|---|---|---|
| William Walker Atkinson (The Law of the New Thought, 1902, scan) | His name on the title page | Document |
| Yogi Ramacharaka (Hatha Yoga, 1904, scan) | “Also under the pseudonym”, with ten titles, Who’s Who 1910-1911, p. 57 | His own claim, in print |
| No name: The Law of Financial Success 1907, The Kybalion 1908, Thoughts Are Things 1909, Arcane Series 1909-1911 | “Also, anonymously”, Who’s Who 1912-1913, p. 63, and 1916-1917, p. 76 | His own claim, in print |
| Three Initiates (The Kybalion, 1908, scan) | The anonymous title above; Deslippe calls it his pseudonym (p. 67) | His claim, plus a researcher’s reading |
| Swami Panchadasi, Swami Bhakta Vishita (aura, psychic powers, from about 1916) | Deslippe 2019, p. 68 | Researcher’s attribution |
| Theron Q. Dumont (The Solar Plexus, undated, scan) | A “French-sounding pen name” (Deslippe, p. 68) | Researcher’s attribution |
| Magus Incognito, Theodore Sheldon and others | Secondary lists; no document of his lifetime found | Unverified |
Two points follow from the table. First, the Ramacharaka books and The Kybalion stand on the same footing: Atkinson himself put both on record, in the same reference book, a few lines apart. Second, Deslippe writes that Atkinson “never distanced himself” from his pseudonymous work, and that in the family’s copies he wrote “I Wrote This” next to his initials (p. 65). We have not seen those copies, so that detail stays with Deslippe.
Yogi Ramacharaka
Ramacharaka was “one of the earliest” of the names (p. 65). The lessons began as monthly mail-order courses while Atkinson was editing New Thought, and became books from the Yogi Publication Society. The 1910-1911 Who’s Who lists ten of them: Yogi Philosophy (two volumes, 1903-1904), Science of Breath (1903), Hatha Yoga (1904), Raja Yoga (1905), Gnani Yogi (1906), Psychic Healing (1906), compilations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads (1907), Mystic Christianity (1907) and Religions and Philosophies of India (1908) (p. 57). The Hatha Yoga of 1904 names only “Yogi Ramacharaka” on the title page and its copyright is in the name of the Yogi Publication Society, not of a person (scan).
Deslippe describes the yoga of these books as a mixture of physical culture, contemporary science, New Thought and self-help, offered by an American who did not seem concerned with being “a conduit for the pure ancient wisdom of India” (p. 65). Their later life is his subject too: translations into Japanese and Russian, an influence he traces into Reiki and into Stanislavsky’s acting system, and South Asian lecturers in the United States between the wars who presented the books as ancient Indian teaching (p. 69). Those are his findings, reported here as such.
The Kybalion: the paper trail
In 1908, early in what Deslippe calls a five-year burst of more than forty books (p. 67), the Yogi Publication Society issued The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, “by Three Initiates”. The question of who wrote it is treated at length on the Kybalion page; what follows is the documentary record that bears on Atkinson, item by item, with the strength of each.
| Date | Record | What it says, and what that proves |
|---|---|---|
| 1908 | First edition, title page and verso (BYU copy) | “By Three Initiates”; “Copyright 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society”. No person is named. |
| 13 June 1908 | Catalogue of Copyright Entries, p. 38, no. 15439 | “Copyright by Yogi publ. society, Chicago, Ill.”, no. 209612; 223 pages. The copyright was the publisher’s, not an author’s. |
| 1910-1911 | Who’s Who in America, vol. 6, pp. 56-57 | His works and the Ramacharaka titles; no Kybalion. Nothing either way. |
| 1912-1913 | Who’s Who in America, vol. 7, p. 63 | “Also, anonymously: The Law of Financial Success, 1907; The Kybalion, 1908; …” Atkinson claimed the book, in print, in his lifetime. |
| 1916-1917 | Who’s Who in America, vol. 9, p. 76 | The same list. He repeated the claim. |
| 2008 | Library of Congress record n2008026919 | Links “Three Initiates” to Atkinson, citing Wikipedia and a Kybalion website, with the note “Reinvestigate before using again”. A cataloguer’s decision, not independent evidence. |
In short, the record is narrower than either side of the popular debate. No document of 1908 names the author. From 1912 Atkinson named himself, singly, and the entry says “anonymously”, not “with others”. That is a claim, not a signed manuscript, but we know of no document that competes with it. Deslippe, the editor of the 2011 edition, calls “Three Initiates” Atkinson’s “cryptic pseudonym” (2019, p. 67). The book reached France early: the Bibliothèque nationale de France records reprints of a translation by André Durville, “traduit de l’anglais en 1917”, with a preface by A. L. Caillet, and its name record says the book was written, “or at least published”, by Atkinson according to Caillet and W. C. Hartmann (BnF). We have not seen the 1917 edition itself.
The number three comes only from the book. Later writers have proposed partners. The Library of Congress record itself quotes a Kybalion website of 2005 that names Paul Foster Case, Mabel Collins or Michael Whitty, and Wikipedia in 2021 repeating them and adding Harriett Case. No document of the period names any of them, or anyone else, as a co-author, and claims that an esoteric order officially credits Case should be checked against that order’s own publications before they are repeated.
Why a New Thought book called itself Hermetic
Deslippe’s reading of the book is that, while it claimed to be ancient, Egyptian and Hermetic, “it was much more a product of modern American New Thought” (p. 67). The site’s own comparison supports that from the other end: the seven principles of The Kybalion are not found as such in the seventeen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, and its one recognisable Hermetic phrase, “as above, so below”, is a paraphrase of a line in the Emerald Tablet, an Arabic text far younger than the Greek Hermetica. The Hermetic doctrine of correspondences is real, but it is not a law of attraction.
On our reading, the frame fits Atkinson’s signed books: he already presented New Thought as the latest link in a very old chain, wrote of mental “laws” and published yoga under an Indian-sounding name through the same press. An Egyptian master in place of an Indian one is the same move made once more. For one modern afterlife of the book, see Reality Transurfing and the Kybalion.
Last years and afterlife
In 1922 Atkinson published the twelve-volume Personal Power series with Edward Beals, in Deslippe’s view largely a summary of his earlier themes; he and his wife then settled in Los Angeles, where he lectured to New Thought congregations and small classes until his death in November 1932 (pp. 68-69). He left two unpublished manuscripts, The Seven Cosmic Laws and a primer on Theosophy, and his family had to borrow money for the funeral (p. 69). Secondary sources give an exact date (the Library of Congress record, citing Wikipedia, has 22 November 1932); we have not seen a death record.
His influence is larger than his name. Deslippe cites a 1995 article that traces ideas in Norman Vincent Peale’s positive thinking to The Kybalion by way of the metaphysical writer Florence Scovel Shinn, and connects Atkinson’s books with the 1960s counterculture and with the “law of attraction” of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006) (p. 70). Atkinson made no serious effort to found a church or institution of his own (p. 69). That, and the pen names, is why the anonymous Hermetic book outlived the name of the man who claimed it.
How to check this yourself
Every primary record on this page is a free scan (the copyright catalogue, three volumes of Who’s Who in America under “ATKINSON, William Walker”, the BYU first edition); the library records and Deslippe’s article are online too. For the general method, dating a claim by its earliest document, see Is it really ancient?. Where this page reports Deslippe, it is his research; where it cites a scan, you can open the page.
| Born | 5 December 1862, Baltimore, Maryland (Who’s Who in America 1910-1911) |
|---|---|
| Died | November 1932, Los Angeles area (Deslippe 2019); exact date not seen in a primary record |
| Occupation | In commerce 1882-1894; lawyer (Pennsylvania bar 1894, Illinois 1903); writer and editor from 1900 |
| Edited | Suggestion (associate, 1900), New Thought (1901-1905), Advanced Thought (from 1916) |
| Movement | New Thought |
| Pen names and anonymous works he claimed | Yogi Ramacharaka (from 1903); anonymous works incl. The Kybalion (1908) |
| Pen names attributed by Deslippe | Swami Panchadasi, Swami Bhakta Vishita, Theron Q. Dumont |
| Output | Over a hundred books and close to a thousand articles, by Deslippe’s count |
Fair questions
Who was William Walker Atkinson?
An American New Thought writer and editor (1862-1932), born in Baltimore, who practised law before turning to writing in Chicago around 1900. He edited New Thought magazine (1901-1905) and later Advanced Thought, and wrote over a hundred books, many under pen names.
Was Yogi Ramacharaka a real person?
No. “Yogi Ramacharaka” was a pen name. Atkinson listed ten Ramacharaka books, from Yogi Philosophy (1903) to Religions and Philosophies of India (1908), in his own Who’s Who in America entry for 1910-1911, under “Also under the pseudonym”.
Did Atkinson write The Kybalion?
He claimed it. The 1908 book names only “Three Initiates”, and the copyright was registered to the Yogi Publication Society. From 1912 Atkinson’s Who’s Who in America entry lists “The Kybalion, 1908” among works published “anonymously”. No document names any co-author. Details are on the Kybalion page.
What pen names did Atkinson use?
Deslippe counts more than a dozen. Atkinson himself put Yogi Ramacharaka and several anonymous titles on record. Deslippe attributes Swami Panchadasi, Swami Bhakta Vishita and Theron Q. Dumont to him; other names circulate without a document we could find.
What is New Thought?
An American movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that held, in Philip Deslippe’s words, that “one’s thoughts affect health, well-being and circumstances”. Atkinson was one of its most prolific writers, and his 1906 Thought Vibration is subtitled The Law of Attraction in the Thought World.
Sources & further reading
- Who’s Who in America, vol. 6, 1910-1911 (Chicago: A. N. Marquis), entry “Atkinson, William Walker, author”, pp. 56-57; Internet Archive.
- Who’s Who in America, vol. 7, 1912-1913 (Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Company, 1912), entry “Atkinson, William Walker”, pp. 62-63 (“Also, anonymously” on p. 63); Internet Archive.
- Who’s Who in America, vol. 9, 1916-1917 (Chicago: A. N. Marquis), entry “Atkinson, William Walker”, p. 76; Internet Archive.
- Library of Congress, Catalogue of Copyright Entries, Part 1: Books, Group 1, new series vol. 5 (Washington, 1908), p. 38, no. 15439 (The Kybalion, registered 13 June 1908); Internet Archive.
- Three Initiates, The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece (Chicago: The Yogi Publication Society, Masonic Temple, 1908), title page and verso; Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University copy, Internet Archive.
- Philip Deslippe, “The Hidden Sage: William Walker Atkinson & His Legacy”, New Dawn, Special Issue vol. 13 no. 5 (2019), pp. 63-70; author’s PDF.
- Philip Deslippe (ed. and intro.), The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2011), ISBN 978-1-58542-874-8.
- William Walker Atkinson, The Law of the New Thought (Chicago: The Psychic Research Company, 1902); Internet Archive.
- William Walker Atkinson, Thought Vibration, or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World (Chicago: New Thought Publishing Co., copyright 1906; printing The Library Shelf, 1908); Internet Archive.
- Yogi Ramacharaka, Hatha Yoga, or The Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well-Being (Chicago: Yogi Publication Society, 1904); Internet Archive.
- Theron Q. Dumont, The Solar Plexus or Abdominal Brain (Chicago: Advanced Thought Publishing Co., n.d.); Internet Archive.
- Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record “Three initiates” (FRBNF13195437), and record FRBNF41108357 (Le Kybalion, “traduit de l’anglais en 1917 par M. André Durville”, reprint, Montélimar, 2007); catalogue.bnf.fr.
- Library of Congress Name Authority File, “Three Initiates, 1862-1932”, n2008026919 (record of 14 April 2008, revised; citing Wikipedia, 2008 and 2021, and a Kybalion website, 2005); id.loc.gov.