Historians following Ginzburg identified what they saw as shamanic elements in the accusations of the
witch trials of the Early Modern period. These included
Eva Pocs[3] and
Emma Wilby.[4][5] This group of authors proposes what is known as the "
witch-cult hypothesis", arguing that there was a religious cult with continuity reaching into the pre-Christian period behind what became identified as "witchcraft" in the Early Modern period.
The idea of shamanism's existence in Ancient Greece was advanced by
E. R. Dodds[6] and criticized by Michael J. Puett.[7]
^Ginzburg, Carlo (1983). The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
^Ginzburg, Carlo (1991). Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. London: Penguin.
^Pocs, Eva (1999). Between the Living and the Dead. Budapest: Central European University Press.
^Wilby, Emma (2005). Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
^Wilby, Emma (2010). The Visions of Isabel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
^Eric R. Dodds (1951). The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1951.
^Michael J. Puett (2002). To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-divinization in Early China, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp. 83-86.