ABSTRACT
With this question, the Swedish priest Ericus Johannis Prytz began a new chapter in his Magia incantatrix – a handwritten treatise on the ‘foul and hideous sin of sorcery’, completed in 1632 according to its title page.2 As a scholar and a clergyman, a sworn enemy of witches and warlocks, and recognised for having a ‘guarding eye in his office against false teachings’,3 Prytz had in previous chapters revealed the demonic roots and devilish nature of all kinds of witchcraft. Now he turned his attention to the issue of the Waffensalbe or weapon salve – a ‘marvellous’ therapy for wound healing, generally attributed to the Swiss physician, alchemist and mystic Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus.4
