In 1970, Dave and Toni Arthur recorded Hearken to the Witches Rune, an occult-themed LP of traditional British folk songs. Fifty years on, the album has gained cult status. But the record’s gestation and legacy is just as extraordinary as the music itself: a story that stretches from the basement rituals of tabloid-baiting “King of the Witches” Alex Sanders to children’s TV favourites Play School and Play Away. Dave and Toni reminisce with Bob Fischer
In 1971, artist Jan Parker, who’d been a sketch artist on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey, executed a series of macabre illustrations for Witchcraft and Black Magic by the prolific occult author Peter Haining. Though he wrote some reference works on Doctor Who, Haining may have become most well known for arguing, in two books, a claim that Sweeney Todd was a real person. That assertion has never been widely embraced, and Haining passed in 2007.
Jan Parker, on the other hand, is alive and well, and remains active as an artist. But if all you know of him is work like we’ve reproduced here, you wouldn’t recognize his current output. No longer a dark and surreal arbiter of fantasy and the arcane, he’s now a painter of almost flourescently vivid impressionistic abstractions. Though some of his newer pieces are indeed quite striking, the lurid horrors below are more our speed. Via Monster Brains
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/witchcraft_and_black_magic_surreal_occult_fantasy_paintings
https://kubrickonia.blogspot.com/2007/06/lost-illustrations-of-2001-part-2.html
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