A Cloud of Forgetting Below, a Cloud of Unknowing Above

The Cloud of Unknowing is a fourteenth century Middle English guide to contemplative prayer whose central image gives the book its name: the soul seeking union with God is told to place a cloud of forgetting beneath itself, setting aside every created thing, memory and thought, while accepting that a cloud of unknowing necessarily remains between the soul and God, since God cannot be grasped by the intellect at all, only reached by love striking blindly into that darkness. The author instructs the reader to press against this unknowing with a short, single word, repeated rather than elaborated, an early and remarkably concrete description of a one word prayer practice that anticipates much later contemplative methods by centuries.

Unlike a speculative theological treatise, the Cloud presents itself throughout as a practical manual, addressed directly to a young disciple and full of blunt, sometimes wry, corrective advice about common errors beginners make, which gives the text an intimate, almost conversational tone unusual among works of formal mystical theology from this period. The author repeatedly warns against confusing this practice with idle daydreaming or emotional intensity, insisting the work is one of disciplined will directed toward God rather than any special feeling, a distinction he returns to whenever he suspects a reader has misunderstood the method.