William Walker Atkinson(Yogi Ramacharaka) (December 5, 1862 - November 22, 1932) was an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, as well as an occultist and an American pioneer of the New Thought movement. He is also thought to be the author of the pseudonymous works attributed to Theron Q. Dumont and Yogi Ramacharaka.
He is the author of an estimated 100 books, all written in the last 30 years of his life. He was also mentioned in past editions of Who's Who in America, Religious Leaders of America, and several similar publications. His works have remained in print more or less continuously since 1900.
William Walker Atkinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 5, 1862, to William and Emma Atkinson. He began his working life as a grocer at 15 years old, probably helping his father. He married Margret Foster Black of Beverly, New Jersey, in October 1889, and they had two children. The first probably 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 the late 1880s he found it with New Thought, later attributing the restoration of his health, mental vigor and material prosperity to the application of the principles of New Thought. 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 the 1890s, Atkinson had become interested in Hinduism and after 1900 he devoted a great deal of effort to the diffusion of yoga and Oriental occultism in the West. Atkinson died November 22, 1932 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 69, after 50 years of simultaneously successful careers in business, writing, occultism, and the law.
Many mysteries still surround Atkinson's life, including the fact that a certificate of copyright issued three years after his death is said to have been signed by the author himself.
