I basically wrote an essay on witchcraft and sanitized American Culture, so here's that if you want to read it
"I have this crack dream of becoming a journalist and studying folk magic traditions around the world. Like Stregheria and Italian folk magic, Slavic and Romanian witchcraft, Druids and Celtic magic, Mexican folk magic, and folk witchcraft from places like Africa and the Caribbean, for instance. Not to personally practice them as a lot of these are closed cultures, but to study the similarities and culture of magic around the world.
But I've found that a lot of cultural folk traditions, as opposed to the more widely popular idea of witchcraft practiced in America and general non-rural communities, can be a lot more risqué. Or, more accurately, modern witchcraft is heavily sanitized compared to these folk traditions. Which is funny because a lot of Americans still gawk at witchcraft, even in its most censored form. That can be true of people, especially Christians, around the world, but I find it a particular problem with Americans specifically.
I find that the reason why Americans can be incredibly averse to other cultural traditions like folk magic and even just simple things like other culture's burial traditions is because we are incredibly sheltered people. It’s just the truth. If you grew up in America, you’ve been fed a very specific narrative from birth, regardless of social class. Granted, the American elite are far more sheltered than the American poor, but we all have a biased and warped view of the world. Because the United States is such a massive country, hosting so many different landscapes and cultures, you basically never have to leave. I’m 20 years old and I don’t even have a passport yet, because if I want to see something different or travel, I can just move to the next state over and it’s like a whole new world. But the cultures in America are very watered-down compared to the cultures they originally came from; they have to be, in order to assimilate properly, since Americans are so sheltered. Our culture and especially our perception of things is heavily sanitized. So much so that most Americans never have to see an animal be killed or roasted in their entire lives.
It reminds me of when I was in school. Every year at church, for our festival in summer, we’d roast a lamb. And I don’t mean we’d hop over to a grocery store and buy some lamb meat, I mean we roasted the whole lamb. It was hanging on a spit and everything. That was completely normal for me; in fact, I liked it that way. It created a whole new respect for what I was eating. When you see an animal be killed and cooked like that, it really occurs to you that this was a living thing that died to give you your meal, so you finish the whole meal out of respect. I genuinely think we’d have a lot less food waste if we all ate this way, at least at some point in our lives. But when I would tell my friends at school about it and show them pictures, they were horrified. Some even called me a barbarian. That’s when it occurred to me just how sheltered Americans are. Most don’t seem to realize that this is where all their meat comes from, even if they don’t see the process of it. We’re so blissfully ignorant of so much, and we don’t even know. No wonder we’re such a prejudiced country.
I’ve basically written a whole essay here already on the sanitized culture of the United States, but it genuinely is fascinating to me. And I’m not immune to this, by the way. Not at all. I’m sure that, should I follow through with this dream and travel around the world learning folk magic, there will be more than a few things that freak me out too! It’s just a part of being an American, unfortunately. But I digress."
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