Three Initiates

Three Initiates is the pseudonym under which The Kybalion was published in Chicago in 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society. The book presents seven Hermetic principles said to descend from the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus, expressed in the language of the New Thought movement. The identity of the authors has never been officially confirmed, but the work is generally attributed to William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932), a Pennsylvania-born lawyer who turned to New Thought after a breakdown, edited the magazines Suggestion and New Thought, ran the Yogi Publication Society, and wrote more than a hundred books under his own name and such pseudonyms as Yogi Ramacharaka and Theron Q. Dumont.