Principia Prima Formarum: lux et impello by Victor Casterbrook

Title: Principia Prima Formarum: lux et impello (First Principles in Formae: Lux and Impello)

Author: Victor Casterbrook 

Publisher: Ambrose House Press 1924

Source book: Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London #9)

This book was lifted from the Portico Library in Manchester by Preston Carmichael in 1989. Does anyone in the Rivers of London books ever buy a book? An awful lot seem to have been half inched from prestigious libraries. Preston found seven magic rings inside the book, so naturally he stole them. Because, obviously. 

Preston’s ex-wife Samantha, now Sam, still has the book so Peter Grant can see the tiny hollowed out space where the rings were hidden.

Principia Prima Formarum is a magical textbook published in a limited edition by Ambrose House Press in 1924. Peter notes the Ambrose House logo: a compass and a pyramid. It was stored in a box to be returned to the Sow Archive, Volcrepe, Glossop, Derbyshire.

Also mentioned in Amongst Our Weapons are Cuthbertson’s A Modern Commentary on the Great Work, Charles Kingsley’s On Fairies and Their Abodes, and An Animal Phantasmagoria (1857) by Enoch Corkenhale. Corkenhale theorised that ‘the spirits of animals are most often associated with the presences of man. As a faithful hound may refuse to leave its master’s grave, so may its ghost refuse to leave its master’s abode.’ Hmmm.

It really is very impressive that Ben Aaronovitch includes so many fictional books in his Rivers of London series. Not only the books of course, he gives us authors and even publishers too. Well done him.

Thanks to The British Museum