The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

214 Rosemary’s Baby
Rosemary’s Baby was made into a film in 1968, starring
Mia Farrow as the victim mother, John Cassavetes as
her opportunistic husband who sells her out to the DEVIL,
and Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer as the ringleader
witches of a coven. Ralph Bellamy stars as a doctor and
member of the coven. Much of the shooting was done at
the Dakota, New York’s brooding Gothic residence of the
rich and famous and the site where, in 1980, John Lennon
was fatally shot.
Levin’s plot deals with Devil worshippers who call
themselves witches. They follow the Devil’s instructions
to arrange for him to rape the woman the Devil has chosen
to conceive and deliver the Antichrist.
The story takes place in New York City in 1966.
Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse are young newlyweds
in search of a new apartment. Guy is a mediocre actor
struggling to succeed but barely making it in bit parts and
commercials. At the sinister-looking Branford building,
Rosemary falls in love with an apartment and persuades
Guy to rent it. The apartment belonged to a mysterious
old woman who grew herbs and died in a coma.
After taking the apartment, the Woodhouses learn
from a writer friend, Edward Hutchins (“Hutch”), that
the Branford has a long and dark history of crime and
strange happenings, including cannibal sisters and a dead
Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse, whose husband sells
her to Satan in order to give birth to his demonic son in
Roman Polanski’s film Rosemary’s Baby (1968) (AUTHOR’S
COLLECTION)
baby found in the basement. It was home to the notorious
Adrian Marcato, a self-proclaimed witch of the late 19th
century, who claimed to be able to conjure up the Devil.
The Woodhouses laugh it off.
The Woodhouses meet their odd neighbors, Minnie
and Roman Castevet, following the suicide of a young girl
who was living with them. Unbeknownst to Rosemary,
the Castevets seduce Guy with promises of professional
success in exchange for the satanic rape of Rosemary.
Rosemary is drugged by a chocolate mousse dessert made
by Minnie but remains conscious enough during her hideous
ordeal to know that it is not a dream. The naked
witches stand around her chanting while an inhuman
monster with animal eyes, reptilian skin, and a huge penis
rapes her. The following morning, she uncomfortably
decides it was a dream, after all. Guy tells her he made
love to her while she was asleep.
Rosemary becomes pregnant, and the Castevets convince
her to see Dr. Abraham Saperstein. Saperstein
prescribes a daily “vitamin” drink made by Minnie, supposedly
containing fresh herbs. The true ingredient is
a mysterious and vile-smelling “tanis root.” This root,
which is more like a fungus, also is contained in a silver
amulet necklace the Castevets give Rosemary to wear—
the same necklace worn by the suicidal girl.
The pregnancy does not go well. Rosemary loses
weight and suffers constant pain, which Saperstein tells
her is not unusual. When Hutch visits and hears of the
tanis root, he becomes alarmed and does research. He attempts
to tell Rosemary of his findings but is felled by a
coma and dies before he is able to do so, murdered by a
CURSE cast by the witches. At his funeral, a woman gives
Rosemary a book that Hutch had wanted her to have,
along with the message that “the name is an anagram.”
The book, All of Them Witches, tells of a fungus
known as “Devil’s pepper” used in rituals, and profiles
various infamous witches, among them Adrian Marcato.
Rosemary gets out her Scrabble set to try to decipher the
anagram in the book’s title, but nothing makes sense.
Then she notices that the name of Marcato’s son, Steven,
is underlined in the book. Steven Marcato rearranges to
Roman Castevet. Rosemary buys books on witchcraft,
which tell her that witches cast malevolent spells upon
people to maim and kill them and use BLOOD in their
rituals—particularly baby’s blood—as well as human
flesh. She surmises the witches want her baby to use in
their rituals.
The dark forces close in on Rosemary, despite her attempts
to save herself. She appeals to Guy, then discovers
he is part of the conspiracy. The same thing happens with
Saperstein. She attempts to escape, but the witches trap
her in her apartment, and she is delivered of the baby.
She is told the baby was stillborn, but she discovers the
witches are keeping it in the Castevets’ apartment.
The coven convenes to hail the birth of the Antichrist,
who has been named Adrian Steven. Rosemary, armed