Nothing Here Now but the Recordings
Notes on the Shamanism of Bowden, Burroughs & Neville – Part 2

2,852 words

(Part 1)

For a book with “shaman” in the title, Dutton spends remarkably little time on shamans or shamanism, words which occur less than 20 times in the 333 pages of text. Bowden is a shaman, or shamanistic, in the sense that he can, sort of like a shaman, travel to other spaces or dimensions, obtaining knowledge which can be brought back to his tribe to heal or inspire them.

But saying more than this about shamanism would be problematic. Where is this other world, and how does Bowden supposedly travel there and back? As a hard-headed 21st century evolutionary psychologist, is it likely Dutton actually thinks such realms exist, and even if he does grant them theoretical existence, can people travel there, and how? And how does such a performance change one’s life and inspire others?

The book dances schizophrenically around Bowden the shaman and Bowden the liar, which is why those Bowden inspired as a shaman are angered by the emphasis on Bowden the liar; moreover, I don’t think Dutton sees where they intersect, and more importantly, how the liar actually explains the shaman.

Dutton references the Woodbridge eulogy – that Bowden “decided […] to write his own life story,” and “to be the protagonist in his own novel” – and then interprets it in a rather mundane fashion:

The kind of charismatic exuberance of Bowden’s speeches – the way he could carry people into a different world – can only exude from people who delude themselves that they are protagonists in their own novel and, to successfully persuade themselves of this, they must lie to others.

To “delude oneself”; to “lie to others”; even the choice of a word like “exude” for a supposedly spiritual influence rather than, say, “radiate”; [1] one might continue the wordplay and say that we see here not the POV of an objective observer but someone who has very definitely taken a stand on a rather brash kind of materialism, along the lines of the old Behaviorist slogan “the brain secretes thoughts as the gall bladder secretes bile.” [2]

To lie? As Vincent Vega might retort, that is one way to say it;[3] another way would be: to use the power of imagination.[4]

That’s from the very last page. Let’s go back to page 5 and see if something has been lost along the way:

Bowden made them feel part of something greater; of the inevitable re-triumph of the English and European peoples in the face of their self-induced destruction, and part of a religion of power in which you must not give-up; in which you must fight eternally to be one of the gods, as did the pagans. Bowden allowed them to absorb themselves in a kind of performance art centred around him, in which the apparently dystopian present did not matter and they could feel bonds with England, with place, with ancestors; all the time hypnotised by this baba in a bowtie. Bowden was a shaman in the sense that he imparted to them semi-secret knowledge—a whole new way of understanding historical thinkers such that his initiates were connected to “based thought” and the discovery of obscure based thinkers and their spine-tingling originality—such that they were part of a clandestine intellectual elite; an elite that would win a war to tear down the insanity of modern England.”

Imagination and feeling; that’s our cue to turn to Neville Goddard, the Barbados-born American metaphysical lecturer who, under the singular cognomen “Neville,” more than anyone else has established, clarified and simplified the power of imagination to change reality.

Constant Readers will know that I’ve devoted many essays to Neville, bringing him and his teaching into relation with such figures as Evola, Colin Wilson, and even Trump.[5] They will perhaps be glad that I don’t intend to go over this ground again, but only pull out a few items to, with any luck, clarify Bowden’s own life and method.

The bulk of Neville’s ten or so books and 300 or more taped or transcribed lectures (of which more anon) are devoted to explaining the Method, usually through hyper-spiritualized interpretations of Biblical passages, and illustrated with stories of its successful application by Neville and others.

But we don’t have to plow through all that (pleasant as some of us might find it to be) since Mitch Horowitz gives us a useful precis of Neville’s own “simple method for changing the future.”

First, clarify a sincere and deeply felt desire. Second, enter a state of relaxed immobility, bordering on sleep. Third, enact a mental scene that contains the assumption and feeling of your wish fulfilled. Run the little drama over and over in your mind until you experience a sense of fulfillment. Then resume your life. Evidence of your achievement will unfold at the right moment in your outer experience. [6]

“Feeling is the secret,” as Neville reiterated, and perhaps it was also the secret to Bowden’s effects:

Bowden was, to some extent, the Weberian charismatic; the man gifted with certain skills that, for a people feeling a sense of crisis or meaninglessness, is able to make a cold world seem warm again. When there is no crisis, such a person is perceived as a crank, or is a charismatic only for a small group of troubled followers, but as a sense of crisis spreads so does his role as the charismatic.

Compare Evola’s account of the alchemical process: “In order for any image to act in the way I am talking about, it, it must be loved. It must be assumed in a great, inner calm and then warmed up, almost nourished, with sweetness, without bringing the will or any effort into play.”[7]

Of course, one might dismiss all this talk about a “simple method to change the future” as hooey, like so many of Bowden’s imaginary tales.[8] But suppose someone, in the spirit of Dutton as biographer, set out to discover whether, as Superman’s father might say, these are the “careless product of wild imagination” or “matters of undeniable fact”?

Well, fortunately we have Mitch Horowitz, the foremost historian of modern occultism, who has devoted considerable energy to just that. Here are a couple of stories that strike the same kind of note as Bowden’s fibs.

One Bowdenesque mystery is the identity or existence of “Abdullah,” the “black Ethiopian rabbi” in New York City who, Neville claims, taught him The Method, along with Hebrew, the Bible and the Qabalah. Mitch Horowitz has amassed considerable evidence from public records in an attempt to document the probable identity of “Abdullah.” Horowitz has noticed that another immigrant New Thought teacher, Joseph Murphy, has, in a recently published interview, described his own encounter with a “professor Abdullah, a Jewish man of black ancestry, a native of Israel, who knew, in every detail, all the symbolism of each of the verses of the Old and the New Testaments.”

A check of historical accounts, census records and real estate listings reveals “a plausible candidate”:

He is found in the figure of a 1920s and 30s-era black-nationalist mystic named Arnold Josiah Ford. Like Neville, Ford was born in Barbados, in 1877, the son of an itinerant preacher. Ford arrived in Harlem around 1910 and established himself as a leading voice in the Ethiopianism movement, a precursor to Jamaican Rastafarianism.[9]

Ford’s Ethiopianism also taught “mental metaphysics” and mind healing, as did another movement Ford belonged to, black nationalist Marcus Garvey’s Negro Improvement Association.[10]

Unfortunately for the theory, as Horowitz admits, Abdullah left New York in 1931, responding to Haile Selassie’s offer of land grants in rural Ethiopia for returnees from the black diaspora. This is a period “sparse of records,” but ultimately “Ford died in Ethiopia in September 1935, a few weeks before Mussolini’s troops crossed the border.”

Since Neville claims to have met “Abdullah” in 1931 and then studied under him in New York for 5 years, it seems Ford can’t be “Abdullah,’ although the latter may simply have been a handy “composite of several contemporaneous figures, perhaps including Ford.”

Indeed, I would suggest that the “Abdullah” character was an instance of a long-standing meme in which “ancient wisdom” is attributed to one or another exotic though conquered people. [11] Not so much a “lie” as a handy, well-established trope.

Another example of a possible Bowdenesque tall tale: Neville later said that after being drafted in November 1942, he used his Method to obtain an honorable discharge within six months. According to a profile in The New Yorker of September 11, 1943, he was already drawing crowds by September 1943. Horowitz made inquiries and found that Neville was, according to the Army, “discharged from service to accept employment in an essential wartime industry.” Horowitz then asked, “This man was a metaphysical lecturer — how is that a vital civilian occupation?” The response was that “Unfortunately, Mr. Goddard’s records were destroyed in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center”; i.e., just a few months after Neville’s death. [12]

Even if even more stories could be confirmed, to some greater or lesser degree, the reader will be glad to hear that I don’t intend to lard my tale with such True Occult Detective tales. I merely want to suggest some similarity between Bowden and Neville, and to suggest further that seeing them together — Neville a fully developed occult practitioner and Bowden a sort of home-made, perhaps accidental, magickian who never had the chance to fully perfect his craft – is just as valid and far more satisfying than Dutton’s “Bowden as cheerful mutant” story.

I say “accidental” because there’s no evidence of how Bowden could have read about or been instructed in such occult practices. It’s possible that that Bowden could have been inspired by Blake, whom Neville paired with the Bible as his main resources, but I can’t find much to link them.[13]

Another possible source is Johann Caspar Schmidt, aka “Max Stirner.” Dutton notes that Bowden dedicated his first book, Mad, to Stirner (and his mother), and quotes a reviewer calling the author “clearly a ‘wannabe Stirner’.” (pp. 135, 152). Stirner was something of a fabulist himself (even his name is invented, from a schoolmate’s mockery of his massive forehead); he also died young and penniless, though he was briefly married. It is arguable that Nietzsche, a key figure for Bowden, derived much of his characteristic philosophy from reading the by-then-forgotten Stirner. More importantly, Stirner is another connection to the power of Imagination – the preface of his only book, The Ego and Its Own, ends thus: “I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.” [14]

However, there is a stronger though still circumstantial connection through Bill Hopkins. Dutton writes that “Bowden’s involvement with Hopkins, or discovery of him, appears to have been a turning point in his life.” Not only did Bowden abandon his Bohemian or hippie “look” but “he started to claim to be married with children, to be a millionaire, and started to be secretive about where he lived…. In other words, he decided to adopt a persona of power and success.” (167-68).

It seems that after meeting with Hopkins his confabulations kicked into high gear. In yet other words, he began to explore the power of Imagination to try to produce success in life. Dutton identifies “the key theme” of Hopkins’ first and only novel The Leap as “almost anything is possible if a person’s ‘Will’ is fully awakened.” (172). As Colin Wilson describes the climax of the novel: “At the end of the book, he has to learn the hardest of all lessons, that he will never solve his problem while he looks to someone else to provide with the answer. Claremont is lying when she tells him that the rocks will move if he has enough faith; yet the rocks do move, and he is saved.” [15]

Notes

[1] Perhaps inevitable, given its proximity to “delude”: “You often choose words for sound rather than meaning.” Brandon to Cadell, Rope (Hitchcock, 1948)

[2] By contrast, noted occult historian Mitch Horowitz is quick to emphasize that he writes as a participant-observer. While acknowledging the need for some level of objectivity, he rightly points out that we are quite used to, for instance, histories of Mormonism written by Mormons, or accounts of the Inquisition, say, written by Roman Catholics. And if we are to prove a method by experience – otherwise, in what sense are we being empirical? – then we must have these experiences. “The perspective of the critics requires leavening by experience. But experience will not touch the staunchest among them simply because they avoid participation in ideas.” The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2018), Chapter Ten, “Mirror Man: The Centrality of Neville Goddard,” and my review here.

[3] Mia: Fell out of a window.
Vincent: Hmm, hmm, well that is one way to say it. Another way to say it would be that he was thrown out. Another way would be he was thrown out by Marcellus. And yet, even another way is to say that he was thrown out of a window by Marcellus because of you.
Mia: Is that a fact?
-Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1996)

[4] “Imagination” occurs only twice: Alex Kurtagic is quoted as attributing to Bowden a “morbid imagination” of death, and Dutton refers to one of Bowden’s yarns as reflecting “the imagination of an extremely imaginative man.”

[5] These have been collected as Mysticism After Modernism: Crowley, Evola, Neville, Watts, Colin Wilson, and Other Populist Gurus (Melbourne, Australia: Manticore Press, 2020) and more recent ones can be found here; one of my many fans has put together a colorful, annotated selection here.

[6] The Miracle Club, loc. cit.

[7] Julius Evola, Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2001), p57. Discussing a butterfly cocoon owned by the Tooth Fairy in The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991), an entomologist says “Somebody grew this guy. Fed him honey and nightshade, kept him warm. Somebody loved him.”

[8] Neville intended his tales to suggest methods and serve as examples, not as proof; the best proof, he would say, is to simply try it and see. “Were it possible to carry conviction to another by means of reasoned arguments and detailed instances this book would be many times its size. It is seldom possible, however, to do so by means of written statements or arguments since to the suspended judgment it always seems plausible to say that the author was dishonest or deluded [Dutton’s word du jour!], and, therefore, his evidence was tainted. Consequently, I have purposely omitted all arguments and testimonials, and simply challenge the open-minded reader to practice the law of consciousness as revealed in this book. Personal success will prove far more convincing than all the books that could be written on the subject.”
— Feeling is The Secret (1944), Foreword. Compare: “The Nordic scientific spirit can only accept as true that which is in accord with science and experience.” — The Enemies of the National Socialist Worldview and their Doctrine of the Equality of Humanity (Der Reichsführer SS/SS-Hauptamt, Rassenpolitik (Berlin, 1943).

[9] See At Your Command: The First Classic Work by the Visionary Mystic Neville; New York: Tarcher Cornerstone Editions, 2016 (includes Mitch Horowitz’s essay on Neville’s life and work, “Neville Goddard: A Cosmic Philosopher”), and my review here.

[10] Yes, Trump’s meme magic, from Peale to Neville to Abdullah, is perhaps ultimately rooted in the black nationalist movement of the 1920s; and blossoming forward, in the Afrofuturism of the music of Sun Ra and the Wakanda of Black Panther. For more on Garvey, and Black Separatism in general, see here.

[11] Many earlier New Thought writers adopted such pseudonyms as Swami Pachandasi or Yogi Ramacharaka (both William Walker Atkinson). We see another form of this today in the “Magic Negro” who instructs clueless White consumers about insurance or banking in many commercials.

[12] See Horowitz, The Miracle Club. In “Immobile Warriors: Evola’s Post-War Career from the Perspective of Neville’s New Thought,” I discuss some other details of Neville’s release from the Army, including a possible connection with the Abdullah story: his commanding officer was the son of Sen. Theodore Bilbo, “notorious” segregationist, who had actually collaborated with Marcus Garvey’s Ethiopianism movement.

[13] “Before the 20th Century I think who influenced me are the most imaginative painters. People like Blake….” See the transcript of Bowden’s “last interview,” here.

[14] See my discussion of Stirner and Neville, “A Word from the Wise Guy: The Mid-Century Mysticism of Max Stirner.” It should be noted that when Dutton discusses Bowden’s self-publishing house, Egotist Press, he does not notice that the name of the managing director, “John Mackay,” is not only “presumably another Bowden pseudonym” but undoubtedly a reference to Stirner’s rediscoverer and biographer, John Mackay, a Scottish/German who lived in Berlin and who, under his own pseudonym, “Sagitta,” wrote many works between 1909 and his death in 1931 promoting the legalization of pederasty.

[15] Colin Wilson, “Foreword” to The Leap! [London: Deverell & Birdsey, 1984], xii.) This assumes a positive interpretation of the book and its hero; for an alternative view, see Greg Johnson’s review here. Hopkins, like Bowden, seems not to have been very successful in life, what with his short-circuited career; no long series of novels, award-winning film adaptations and SWPL-beloved TV series for him!