What He Said. (About Animism, Occultism & Housekeeping, Part 1)

"...(you/I/we) can't know..." The old adage of the Not-So-Little-Anymore Lad shot through my mind as I lifted this book from the shelf with more than a little bit of suspicion. But you must engage to know...

“The etheric world does not consist of solid, measurable, graspable aspects, but rather of processes, movement and interpenetration. It is thus not a world of things but of living beings. If one enters it one becomes aware that it is only in the physical world that things appear lifeless. For wherever material is handled, there are processes. Rudolf Steiner gave an often cited example: to the homemaker who complained to him that her household responsibilities gave her no time to read his lecture cycles he answered gravely, ‘When you clean your living room, you release elemental beings. When you read a lecture cycle, you release no elemental beings.’ This means that cleaning has an influence. Everywhere dirt gathers elemental beings are held fast. For them the moist cloth means release. This is practical occultism.”   

--Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, The Spiritual Tasks of the Homemaker