Yogi Ram

Yogi Ramacharaka • Three Initiates • Bhakta Vishita • Theron Q. Dumont • Swami Panchadasi • Theodore Sheldon

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. 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 Le...

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. 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. Family and early career William Walker Atkinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 5, 1862, 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. 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. Collaboration with Dr. Parkyn and Suggestion magazine 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. 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. Unsigned editorial pieces for Suggestion 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. 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. First published work on New Thought 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. 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. Lectures at the University of Psychic Science 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. Atkinsonia 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. 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. New Thought magazine 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. 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. Publishing career and use of pseudonyms 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 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. He was responsible for helping to publish the magazines Suggestion (1900–1901), New Thought (1901–1905) and Advanced Thought (1906–1916). Atkinson was a past president of the International New Thought Alliance. Mail fraud charges 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. 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. 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. False personas In the 1890s, Atkinson became interested in Hinduism. After 1900, he promoted yoga and Oriental occultism in the West. 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. 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. 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. During the 1910s, Atkinson created another persona, that of Theron Q. Dumont. This entity was su