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Graham St John

Goodreads Author

Born

in Geelong, Australia

Website

http://www.edgecentral.net/

Genre

Music, History, Psychedelic

Member Since

February 2012

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Graham St John, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist and historian with a research interest in transformational events, movements and figures. Among his books are Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MIT Press 2025), Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT (North Atlantic Books 2015), Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance (Equinox 2012), Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox 2009), and the edited collections Weekend Societies: Electronic Dance Music Festivals and Event-Cultures (Bloomsbury 2017), The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Routledge 2010), Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Berghahn 2008), Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge 20 ...more

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Graham St John’s books

Average rating: 4.28 · 170 ratings · 22 reviews · 11 distinct works • Similar authors

	Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT by Graham St John (Goodreads Author), Dennis J. McKenna (Foreword) 4.20 avg rating — 76 ratings — published 2015 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rave Culture and Religion by Graham St John (Goodreads Author) (editor), Hillegonda C. Rietveld (Contributor), François Gauthier (Contributor) 4.54 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 2003 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna by Graham St John (Goodreads Author), Erik Davis (foreword) 4.35 avg rating — 23 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance 3.93 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2012 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures 4.50 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2009 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Routledge Studies in Ethnomusicology) by Graham St John (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Luther Elliott (Contributor), Anthony D’Andrea (Contributor) 4.29 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2010 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2008 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	FreeNRG: Notes from the Edge of the Dance Floor 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2001	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Weekend Societies: Electronic Dance Music Festivals and Event-Cultures 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Global Trance Culture 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Graham joined the group Goodreads Authors/Readers
Apr 04, 2026 01:58AM · like
Graham liked Tom Kovacik's review of Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna: "I have just read it and it´s amazing. The wealth of informations is just astonishing. I have read a couple of books about Mr. McKenna, but this is for me the best one. I would recommend it to any one interested in the life and work of this memetic ar" Read more of this review »
Feb 26, 2026 02:36AM · see review
Graham liked Linda Wallace's review of Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna: "WOW what an achievement. Strange Attractor is very dense, is so well and deeply researched, and VERY FUNNY. I had so many laugh-out-loud moments, at Terrence's words combined with Graham St John's dry and understated phrasing. McKenna's life was incr" Read more of this review »
Feb 26, 2026 02:36AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Strange Attractor by Graham St John. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Strange Attractor by Graham St John <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Graham and 2 other people liked Paul Chambers's review of Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna: "Arriving 25 years after Terence McKenna’s death comes a biography that truly does its subject justice. As a writer of numerous books and articles on DMT, transformational events, rave culture and religion, Graham St John brings academic rigour, exhau" Read more of this review »
Feb 26, 2026 02:36AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Strange Attractor by Graham St John. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Strange Attractor by Graham St John <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Graham rated a book it was amazing Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna by Graham St John (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Feb 24, 2026 01:19AM · 1 like · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Strange Attractor by Graham St John. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Strange Attractor by Graham St John <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Graham made a comment in the group Goodreads Librarians Group — Correct author surname topic " Thanks Scott, I see. Well if it is not possible to remove the period, I will have to retain it and merge the "St John" (i.e. non period) profile with ...more "
Nov 15, 2025 03:00PM

More of Graham's books…

Quotes by Graham St John (?)

“I regard this radical experience of rave as a manifestation of the religious ‘fête’,13 or ‘celebration’. The ‘festive’, a religious category different from that of ritual, is, for Georges Bataille specifically, a human fusion in which this accursed share is given expression. Fuelled by desire, an instinct, a call for destruction, exhilaration, dis-order, a motivation often understood as animalistic, the fête, in which the paradoxes of human and social life collide, is simultaneously harnessed and subordinated by a wisdom which enables the participants to come back from this confusional state with a feeling of replenishment, as if having received some kind of impetus from the ‘outside’ (Bataille 1989: 54).”
― Graham St. John, Rave Culture and Religion

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“Our zealous prowler of the higher dimensions searched in vain for it in the art world. “Verrocchio never saw it. Michelangelo didn’t anticipate it. Yeats didn’t know. Blake hadn’t a clue. Melville wasn’t briefed.”59 There was no wrinkle of it, “not an atom of the presence of this thing,” in the carpets of Central Asia or in the visions of an Arcimboldo or a Fra Angelico or a Bosch.60 If art is “a probing of the unknown,” then why do painters, from Early Renaissance to Abstract Expressionists, give no hint? “We’ve had Beccafumi, Pollock, Piero della Francesca, but nobody got near this, not even the Surrealists.” And yet, as Charles Hayes was informed, “here’s this experience that leaves you absolutely quaking. It’s like an aesthetic orgasm, a Niagara of beauty, but alien beauty.”61 At other times, it had the qualities of an outrageous jest and the ambiguity of a pun. And yet while it possessed the “zany, impossible, improbable, hysterical revelation of the joke,”62 it was remote from any known amusement, and could not be pegged as any thing of the kind.”
― Graham St John, Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna

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