The Canon / Foundational / Christian Mysticism
Foundational · Medieval England
The Cloud of Unknowing
Anonymous (English mystic)
Christian MysticismThe Cloud of Unknowing, written by an anonymous English mystic in the late fourteenth century, is a manual of contemplative prayer addressed to a younger seeker. In plain but penetrating Middle English it counsels its reader to approach God not through reasoning or imagery but through love, entering a "cloud of unknowing" in which the intellect must fall silent and the bare will reaches toward the divine.
Its teaching rests on a sharp distinction between knowing and loving. God, the author insists, cannot be grasped by thought; concepts and even pious images must be placed beneath a "cloud of forgetting" so that the heart may press, by love alone, into the darkness where God is met directly. This deliberate stilling of the discursive mind, often focused through a single short word, is presented as the proper work of the contemplative.
Standing in the apophatic tradition of negative theology, the work is one of the earliest Western technologies for quieting thought in order to touch the divine. Its psychological precision about distraction, intention, and the labor of inner silence has made it a lasting reference point for Christian contemplation and a recognizable ancestor of later meditative practice.
In its words
And smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love; and go not thence for thing that befalleth.
This darkness and this cloud is, howsoever thou dost, betwixt thee and thy God, and letteth thee that thou mayest neither see Him clearly by light of understanding in thy reason, nor feel Him in sweetness of love in thine affection.
He can certainly be loved, but not thought. He can be taken and held by love but not by thought.
Beat with a sharp dart of longing love upon this cloud of unknowing which is between you and your God.
Humility…is nothing else but a true knowledge and experience of yourself as you are.
A short prayer pierces heaven.
Because it is not what you are nor what you have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you desire to be.
Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods.
He may well be loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never.
Practices it teaches
Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer is a modern Christian contemplative method developed by Trappist monks in the 1970s to recover the church's own ancient tradition of silent, wordless prayer.
The Cloud of Unknowing — a single naked word of love held against the dark
The Cloud of Unknowing is a 14th-century English manual of apophatic (negative-way) contemplation. Its central insight: God cannot be reached by thinking — "by love he may be gotten and holden, but by thought…
The Little Word — One-Syllable Prayer ('God' / 'Love')
The anonymous 14th-century English author of The Cloud of Unknowing gives one of the simplest, most concrete contemplative methods in the Western tradition: take a single short word, fasten it to your heart, and…
The Two Devices — Look Over Their Shoulder, and Cower Beneath Them
When the beginner sits in contemplation, thoughts crowd in and will not leave — and trying to beat them down only makes them louder.
The Two Clouds — Unknowing Above, Forgetting Below
The central image of The Cloud of Unknowing is also its central instruction: the contemplative is suspended between two clouds.
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