Nothing says “family-friendly” like summoning a demon.

That, at least, is the judgment of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis’ museum for modern art.

The Walker Art Center has received millions of dollars in taxpayer funds through Minnesota's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.https://t.co/F74SETGTJL pic.twitter.com/8Hdx6eFNIU

— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) August 11, 2023

I have been to the Walker a few times, and I have to say that each time I have I walked away disliking the museum more than the last. It is a Modern Art museum, featuring every sort of lousy art you can imagine is found in so-called “Modern Art.” It is a tremendous contrast to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which is always a pleasure to visit.

I am not one to think in terms of angels and demons, despite their playing a prominent role in some Catholic theology. I just don’t think in such categories. On the other hand, there is nothing benign about the concept of demons, and summoning demons is not generally something anybody would suggest is a desirable activity–certainly not if you are inclined to think of them as something more than metaphorical.

Unless, that is, you are a thoroughly modern person whose sense of the desirable is warped beyond recognition.

The Walker Art Center held a pagan ritual geared toward families last weekend, with a performance called “Lilit the Empathic Demon.”

“Demons have a bad reputation, but maybe we’re just not very good at getting to know them,” an event description reads.

The event, which took place at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, was part of the Walker’s Free First Saturdays program and featured artist Tamar Ettun who creates “demon traps.”

“Families are invited to create a vessel to trap the demon that knows them best — perhaps the ‘demon of overthinking’ — and then participate in a playful ceremony to summon and befriend their demon,” the website explains.

The event was designed for families, and finished with a “playful demon summoning session.”

Lest you think I am seeing this through an excessively Christian lens–assuming that the use of the term “demon” is more associated with evil than was intended, it is pretty clear that the artist herself associates the concept “demon” with violence and what you and I would associate with evil and capriciously violent connotations.

Ettun previously had her artwork, “How to Trap a Demon,” on display in New York at the Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery.

“The exhibition parts with the historical gender binarism that associates Lilith’s archetype with unchecked violence and manipulation; here, Lilit mediates the inner demons and renegade instincts that are deliberately silenced,” the exhibition details read. One image shows Ettun washing what appears to be a placenta with a watering can.

In short, getting in touch with demons, inner or otherwise, is meant to get one in touch with the forces that in civilized societies we seek to suppress.

This is exactly the opposite of what raising children is supposed to do. Much of parenting is teaching children to master their “demons” and keep their appetites in check.

Modern Leftism is about liberating the appetites and embracing them as our true selves, and so much of the cultural rot that is eating up Western culture is driven by the attack on social norms that turn our savage desires into civilized behavior.

It is civilization itself that is the enemy of the modern cultural Left–which is why we are bombarded by demands that every sexual deviance be embraced and given respect. We don’t suppress sexual deviancy simply out of a prudish repulsion to people who behave differently from ourselves. We do it because giving in to our more savage impulses decivilizes us.

Controlling appetites is a good thing. The war against controlling appetites is ultimately destructive to civilization itself. The whole “be who you truly are” is really a call to embrace the basest version of yourself and give up on self-control.

That is why lust, gluttony, resentment, and violent outbursts of anger (directed at the “right” people) are now celebrated by the Left. The Marxist Trans person with a raised fist screaming in the face of a parent trying to protect their child embodies an ideal for the Left.

And hence we wind up in a world where summoning demons is a “family-friendly” activity, and worse, some families actually embrace the experience.

The Walker is, by the way, lavishly funded by the State of Minnesota among other donors, and I got to chip in to fund this.

Nice.