Arcane Teaching

William Walker Atkinson - Wikipedia

A series named The Arcane Teaching is also attributed to Atkinson. Perhaps significantly, the doctrine behind The Arcane Teaching is remarkably similar to the philosophy in The Kybalion (another title attributed to Atkinson), and significant portions of material from The Arcane Teaching were later re-worked, appearing nearly verbatim in The Secret Doctrines of the Rosicrucians by Magus Incognito (yet another Atkinson alias).

Nothing is known of the first edition of The Arcane Teaching, which apparently consisted of a single volume of the same name.

The second edition was expanded to include three 'supplementary teachings' in pamphlet form. The four titles in this edition were: The Arcane Teaching (hardback), The Arcane Formulas, or Mental Alchemy (pamphlet), The Mystery of Sex, or Sex Polarity (pamphlet), and Vril, or Vital Magnetism (pamphlet). This edition was published by A. C. McClurg—the same publisher who brought out the Tarzan the Ape-Man series by Edgar Rice Burroughs—under the "Arcane Book Concern" imprint, and the name of the publisher, A. C. McClurg, doesn't actually appear anywhere upon the books in this edition. The series bears a 1909 copyright mark, listing the copyright holder as "Arcane Book Concern". There also appears to have been a pamphlet entitled Free Sample Lesson which was published under the "Arcane Book Concern" imprint, indicating that it may have appeared concurrently with this edition.

The third edition split the main title, The Arcane Teaching, into three smaller volumes, bringing the total number of books in the series to six. This edition consisted of the following titles (the three titles marked with an asterisk (*) are the volumes that had appeared together as The Arcane Teaching in the previous edition): The One and the Many* (hardback), Cosmic Law* (hardback), The Psychic Planes* (hardback), The Arcane Formulas, or Mental Alchemy (binding unknown), The Mystery of Sex, or Sex Polarity (binding unknown), and Vril, or Vital Magnetism(binding unknown).

The third edition of The Arcane Teaching was published by A. C. McClurg under its own name in 1911. The books in this series bear the original 1909 copyright, plus a 1911 copyright listing "Library Shelf" as the new copyright holder.

A search of the Library of Congress's web site has revealed that none of The Arcane Teaching series resides in its current collection.

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