[Opinion] William Walker Atkinson the poser plagiarist publisher

[Durward]

We went round and round in earlier threads about Castaneda and Atkinson, where it is plain to see that Castaneda practically reprinted much of Atkinson's Personal Power publications word for word. I mentioned that Atkinson was also plagiarizing, and that the actual source materials would be a good find, because as we know, plagiarized or not, the materials can have some interesting gems. We shouldn't always throw out the entire book and what it might teach us just because the author was a molester or a greed pig.
So, finally I see some reports on Atkinson. Other actual sources will follow as I find them.

Researchers and occult historians have identified that William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932) often heavily borrowed, rephrased, or outright lifted material from existing New Thought, occult, and Western philosophy texts, in addition to creating fabricated, antique-sounding personas for his books.

Atkinson was a highly prolific author who often recycled his own material across multiple pseudonyms—such as Yogi Ramacharaka, Theron Q. Dumont, and Swami Panchadasi—to create the impression of a wider, more diverse body of knowledge.

Identified Sources and Influences

• Adams Sherman Hill: Atkinson has been accused of lifting material wholesale from "The Principles of Rhetoric" (1891, 1895) by Hill for his own books on expression.
• G.R.S. Mead: In his work on The Kybalion (written under the pseudonym "Three Initiates"), Atkinson is believed to have drawn heavily upon G.R.S. Mead’s seminal Hermetic translation, Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906), which was published two years before The Kybalion.
• Anna Kingsford: Atkinson relied on the work of Victorian-era occult writer Anna Kingsford (1846–1888) in constructing his occult philosophies.
• New Thought Contemporaries: Much of his early work on "mental science" was a synthesis or adaptation of ideas from Phineas Quimby and Emma Curtis Hopkins, the founders of New Thought.
• Self-Plagiarism: The Secret Doctrines of the Rosicrucians (published under "Magus Incognito") was found to be a near-verbatim republication of portions of The Arcane Teachings, which was an anonymous work also attributed to Atkinson.