Shamanism is a wide umbrella term for spiritual or ecstatic practices in pre-modern societies in the absence of organized religion.
In prehistoric Europe, reconstruction of religious practices affords some evidence shamanism in this sense.
In the organized religions of paganism in antiquity and by extension in pagan remnants in the folk beliefs in Christian Europe during the 2nd millennium, there are also some elements which are associated with "shamanism" by some authors.
The first historian to posit the existence of such shamanic ideas existing within popular beliefs of otherwise Christian Europeans was Carlo Ginzburg, who examined the Benandanti, an agrarian cult found in Friuli, Italy, whose members underwent shamanic trances in which they believed they battled witches in order to save their crops.[1][2]
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.