Nothing Here Now but the Recordings
Notes on the Shamanism of Bowden, Burroughs & Neville – Part 8

1,408 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

While we’ve entered the realm of online immortality,[1] let me end with some speculation on how Bowden’s shamanic methods have been absorbed, perhaps unknowingly, by the online Dissident Right, and even in the unlikeliest of places.

While I was starting to shake these thoughts around in that rag bag I call a mind, the YouTube algorithm, likely noting my propensity to look for uploads dealing with New Thought and politics, decided to add two and two and came up with – synchronicity! — a suggested video called “Tap into a Happier You with 60 Proven Maxims” from none other than the Academic Agent, aka Dr. Neema Parvini, whom Dutton mentions a couple of times (all three share the same publisher).[2] The good doctor apparently likes to switch up his “Value Free Analysis” with YouTube “shorts” offering advice for living in the Current Times, and this is a compilation of, well, sixty of them. Strapping in for the ride, I soon discovered this:

… but you know one of the ways of defeating what I call Boomer truth ultimately will just be to step over as a great man once said and uh there is a utility in that and I’m actually seeing it all the time where people just don’t care about their sacred cows. (16:48) [3]

Cazart! We know who that is, don’t we? But let’s move on, and find some more nuggets:

Beyond any notion of an Overton window what does that mean and who does it give power to [are] the questions to be asked. [To] ignore the Overton window, smash the open window gives you more power, it’s empowering to move beyond it: whatever you focus on gives power to that thing whether it’s positive or negative if you constantly focus on some negative thing some fear that you have it is more likely to happen if you focus on positive things or change that you want to see happen it is more likely to happen if you focus on it in that direction this is an eternal law of the universe really and the more people focus on things they want to see the more likely they are to happen um and uh it kind of swings both ways as well um I mean for example the more our Elites focus on the rise of you know fascism or whatever the more likely it is to manifest [4]but this is a principle that you can [use] not just in politics but in life in general um I would strongly advocate this kind of an eternal principle. (19:38)

Now this next passage could have come from Neville himself:

You are the center of your own reality, which means that there is nothing stopping you from being who you were born to be. When you point to external factors external constraints — they won’t let us do this, they won’t let us do that, the government, this group, that group — you’re giving them power and really you need to re-center. When I talk about being Sensible and Centered [5] the centered part is very important, that you embody the frame of being the boss of your own reality; this is very important for all of our people. (23:36)

And here we have some insight into Bowden’s confabulations:

Now people use this phrase “fake it till you make it” and some people rework this a little bit when they talk about LARPing, you know, you’re a LARPer until you’re not a LARPer, you fake it until it becomes real. Now uh I’m skeptical about putting it in those specific terms but there is a kind of truth to it which is that if you form an identity of yourself … then you kind of um reality realigns to making that the case, if that makes any sense, okay, because it becomes part of your core … and magic things happen; now sometimes the most powerful thing you can do in a situation is just to do something: just act, act first and then the reality is already changed, you’ve already acted and everything else has to realign to that. This is actually something I learned from a certain Dark Lord, Tony Blair, but it can apply in normal life as well… (50:07)

Well, I suppose Burroughs Bowden and Blair has a certain “ring” to it, but I’ll stick with my original trio, Burroughs Bowden and (Barbados-born) Neville. If you’re familiar with any one of them, I suggest you give the other two a try.

Or consider this even more recent example, from a podcast by Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice Radio:

It’s about faith, survival strategy. Some people have a need to bow down to something. I have a need to feel that something is with me. There is a strength there, and again, that’s LARPing, but if you believe you have a god on your side, chances are if you go into battle your outcome is going to be more favorable, if you believe your god is stronger than your enemy’s god. Some people say, well, that’s just a placebo, but whatever works, works. I think its real, I think our ancestors are with us, they are in us, we have genetic memory, all these things we can point to…. And in these days of Science, or “Soy-ance,” that’s increasingly more important, there is a real aspect to this.[6]

Who knows how far – how viral – these ideas may prove in the online age?

There is a man in the US, Elon Musk, who, you might say, is obsessed with Mars. Such people rarely appear in the human population. Today, it may seem unbelievable, but often, after a while, such ideas become reality.” – V. V. Putin [7]

Burroughs was a horrible human being but a skilled practitioner of verbal magick, from whom much can be learned. Bowden was a flawed individual and not quite an accomplished magickian or shaman, but unsurpassed at inspired and inspiring public speaking. Neville would be an ideal role model for life as a modern bourgeoise, using his mastery of the spoken and written word to obtain and maintain it. Modern technology has ensured the survival of their legacies for our use.

These reflections may have wound up being as much of a curate’s egg as Dutton’s book. Bowden would have benefited from a less quotidian survey of his life and thought, with more investigation of its literally occult roots, while Bowden’s fans are likely exaggerating the negative impact on his image. For Bowden the Shaman might have, like Burroughs, turned out to be a much worse character, with much worse effects on the people around him, while Neville displays what could be achieved with what we would call meme magick. Bowden’s relatively minor foibles should not dissuade anyone from taking up his ideas and methods.

Notes

[1] And even here, Burroughs was ahead of us: discussing Burroughs’ 1962 Dead Fingers Talk, an analog prototype of todays’ remix and mash-up culture, editor Oliver Harris asks, “Is there a better definition of digital culture than the talk of dead fingers?” (Calder, 2020, p.XIX)

[2] For example, “Dr Neema Parvini … tweeted on 23rd November 2023 that: ‘The person who most transformed my thinking on how to parse the Islam issue, and also how to spot Counter-Jihad in the service of liberalism, was the late Jonathan Bowden.’”

[3] I’m availing myself of a somewhat dodgy “transcript” while checking it against my own ears and of course correcting what seem like obvious errors.

[4] As indeed I argued in “Lord Kek Commands!: A Look at the Origins of Meme Magick,” reprinted in Mysticism After Modernism, op. cit.

[5] The very title of his political philosophy!

[6] “Returning to Native European Traditions,” (Thor’s Day, April 17, 2025), my own transcript from 1:42:00 and following. As mentioned above, Neville was well aware that the empirical results produced by “Just Try It” were the only proof modern man would accept anyway. For a survey of the scientific basis for the placebo effect, and other “psi” aspects of Neville’ method, see Horowitz, The Miracle Club, op. cit., and my review here. For the related notions of morphic resonance and the ethnic oversoul, consider this.

[7] Neville often used the expression “An assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into reality,” usually attributing it to UK Prime Minister Harold MacMillan. Others attribute it to Winston Churchill and others. There is also the Thomas theorem: a theory of sociology which was formulated in 1928 by William Isaac – “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”