The Cloud of Unknowing

The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the late 14th century.

This is a Christian mystical text that offers guidance on how to prayerfully meditate on the nature of God by focusing on divine love and mercy. The author, who is unknown, writes that the path to God is found by divesting oneself of all earthly concerns and distractions, putting a "cloud of forgetting" between oneself and everything else. God cannot be reached by thinking, he insists, only by love aimed into the cloud of unknowing.

It belongs to the apophatic tradition that runs back to Pseudo-Dionysius, and it stands out for teaching a personal, direct approach to God in plain English, at a time when such instruction was normally given in Latin.

This edition of The Cloud of Unknowing is based on the modernized edition prepared by Evelyn Underhill.

"Fleshly janglers, open praisers and blamers of themselves or of any other, tellers of trifles, ronners and tattlers of tales, and all manner of pinchers, cared I never that they saw this book. For mine intent was never to write such thing unto them, and therefore I would that they meddle not therewith; neither they, nor any of these curious, lettered, or unlearned men. Yea, although that they be full good men of active living, yet this matter accordeth nothing to them".