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William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932), free-mason, theosophist and teacher of magnetism, is one of the most important authors of the New Thought.

Little is known about his childhood, apart from the fact that he was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December, 5th, 1862, of William and Emma Atkinson, both from Maryland.

He married Margaret Foster Black of Beverley, New Jersey, in October 1889 and they had two children. He pursued a business career from 1882 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 the late 1880s he found it with New Thought and later attributed to the application of the principles of New Thought his health, mental vigor and material prosperity.

Some time after his healing, Atkinson began to write articles on the truths he felt he had discovered, which were then known as Mental Science. In 1889, an article by him entitled "A Mental Science Catechism," appeared in Charles Fillmore's new periodical, Modern Thought.

By the early 1890s Chicago had become a major centre for New Thought, mainly through the work of Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Atkinson decided to move there. Once in the city, he became an active promoter of the movement as an editor and author. In 1900 Atkinson worked as an associate editor of Suggestion, a New Thought Journal, and wrote his first book, Thought-Force in Business and Everyday Life, being a series of lessons in personal magnetism, psychic influence, thought-force, concentration, will-power, and practical Mental Science.

Meanwhile, Atkinson became interested in Hinduism and met a certain BaBa Bharata, a pupil of the late yogi Ramacharaka who had become acquainted with Atkinson’s writings. They both shared similar ideas and the two men collaborated. With Bharata providing the material and Atkinson the writing talent, they wrote a series of books attributed to Yogi Ramacharaka as a mark of respect.

Atkinson also wrote a large number of books on the New Thought, which have become very popular and influent amongst the lovers and practitioners of the New Thought.

He wrote almost one hundred books under many other pseudonyms: Theodore Sheldon, Theron Q. Dumont, Swami Panchadasi, The Three Initiates, Magus Incognitus and probably others which have not yet been identified.

In his works, we can cite: The Law of the New Thought (1902) or The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath, a complete manual of breathing philosophy of physical, mental, psychic and spiritual development (1909).

In his books, William Walker Atkinson deals with themes such as: health through magnetism, mystical breathing, karma, vibrations, polarity, projection of thought or visualization.

William Walker Atkinson is probably the author of the famous Kybalion, a study of the hermetic philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece. The book cover shows that this text is the work of “three initiates”, a barely disguised allusion to Hermes Trismegistus. Kybalion, which attempts to link the principles of the New Thought to those of hermeticism, constitutes a very good synthesis of the whole school of thought.