Koraktor
The Koraktor (from Sorbian , also Kuraktor , Kurata , according to character , "embossed characters") is a collective name for magic books in Sorbian folk tales of Upper Lusatia .
Text evidence can be found in Schulenburg's Wendish Volksthum in Sage, Brauch und Sitte (1882): “Once he passed a house, there was a light in the room and the door opened a little. Through the crack he saw a woman with a large beech tree that was black and the letters white. It was the Koraktor. «.
Otfried Preußler took over the name for the magic book in his story Krabat , based on the Sorbian folk tale , published in 1971 and set in Upper Lusatia at the end of the 17th century. There the master teaches the students a dark magic from the Koraktor every Friday evening. The epithet "Höllenzwang" used by Preußler for the book also suggests an incorrect derivation from the Latin participle "coactus", "forced" (from the verb cogere).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Adolf Černý: Mythiske bytosće łužiskich Serbow in M. Horníka, 1893, Budyšin. (pdf, reprint, p. 41) ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Willibald von Schulenburg: Wendish folklore in saga, custom and custom. Berlin: Nicolai, 1882, p. 74.