On the Fundamentals that Underlie the Practice of Magic by Reinhard Maller
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| Elephant and Castle tube station: thanks to Wikipedia |
Author: Reinhard Maller
Publisher: Not known, but printed in Weimar, in 1799
Source book: Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London #4)
On the Fundamentals that Underlie the Practice of Magic, otherwise Über die Grundlagen, die der Praxis der Magie zugrunde leigen is a German (obviously) book of magic stolen from West Hill House, a National Trust property in Highgate. Originally it came from the Weiße Bibliothek in Cologne but that was closed down in 1798 following the French Revolution (no that doesn’t make sense to me either). The text is based on Newtonian principles, but there is more to it than that: it’s a German grimoire. Professor Harold Postmartin is very excited to get his hands on it.
Another book held at West Hill House is Wege der industriellen Nutzung von Magie, or Towards the Industrial Use of Magic. The book is smaller than a mass market paperback with a dull red hardback cover and high quality paper. Eric Stromberg, the German architect of a strange building called Skygarden in Elephant and Castle (and the original owner of West Hill House) has annotated the book and underlined sections about crystallising magic, and about vestigia.
I bet the National Trust were surprised to discover that one of their properties had been designed and lived in by a German wizard (and no: he didn’t go to Hogwarts because that’s a fictional school for wizards).
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| Elephant and Castle: thanks to Wikipedia |
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