October 24 is the date when the Thirty Years War ended in 1648 ... which resulted in thousands of orphans roaming Europe. Like packs of feral dogs, they roved in gangs from city to city ... house to house ... begging for food and repaying stinginess with thievery and trickery. Forget the romanticized Irish-American folklore: This is the true origin of Halloween Trick r Treat and all the related nocturnal door-to-door customs of caroling and wassailing. It all started with starving orphans in an age when people could barely feed their own families ... and had nothing to spare for feral children. A number of these children became infamous, such as Zauberjackl (Magic Jake) who terrorized Salzburg and spawned a witch hunt which resulted in hundreds of street children being rounded up and tortured and killed for witchcraft. A very few even became Robin Hood-style folk heroes, stealing from the rich to help the poor. Krabat was a true-life orphan who is revered to this day in Bohemia (Czech Republic) for having put a curse on the Turks ... thus saving Bohemia from Turkish invaders. The story goes that war orphan Krabat stumbled upon a mill run by a one-eyed wizard and his coven of 11 street boys. The wizard told him he needed a 12th boy to become his apprentice. The wizard was one boy short because he sacrificed a boy every year during the Yuletide season ... to the forces of evil. Krabat outwitted his evil sorcerer by learning to wield more powerful black magic than his master could. It is a great irony that Krabat is admired to this day in the hills of Bohemia because he was the master of such powerful black magic that he defeated his master ... and then used his powers for constructive purposes to help his neighbors and his prince. There is even a statue to Krabat in Bohemia. The story of Krabat has been told many times, most famously in a 1970s animated film by the famed Czech animation filmmaker Karel Zeman. This new German film adaptation of Krabat premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival a few years ago but is not widely shown since subtitled or dubbed films end up on DVD shelves rather than in cinemas in English-speaking countries ... and there is rather a lot of nudity. The film is based on a best-selling youth fiction book Krabat which is immensely popular in German-speaking countries for its subtle message is that Magic is Power ... Power is Seduction ... Only Love Can Save You ... and EVERYTHING IN LIFE HAS A PRICE ... a lesson with which Europeans have grappled for centuries: https://youtube/watch?v=o2_CXLtHXGU
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 14:23:27 +0000
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