I absolutely love this cover illustration – such beautiful, weird symmetry, so resonant of all the imagery surrounding the post-‘Rosemary’s Baby’ witchcraft fad. The strangely gentle effect of the watercolours, those neat bars of colour and the faceless child at the bottom - could almost be something Ghostbox might have come up with in a slightly different world.
The book itself also seems a perfect snapshot of this peculiar moment in popular culture, mixing Ira Levin style suburban witch cult paranoia with a none-more-70s paranormal/new age-inspired approach that freely merges malignant witchery with ESP, meditation and probably reflexology for all I know.
It’s… pretty terrible to be honest, highly reminiscent of that awful Bert I. Gordon / Orson Welles witch movie, but it more than makes up for such failings in historical/aesthetic value.
It seems Signet were pushing “Gothic” pretty heavily back in ’69;
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