The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism, written in Middle English in the late fourteenth century (around 1375) by an unknown English author, possibly a Carthusian monk. It is written as a series of instructions from a spiritual teacher to a younger student. Its central claim is that God cannot be reached through reason or thought, only through love. The book asks the reader to put every idea and image — even good ones — beneath a “cloud of forgetting,” and to reach toward God, who is hidden above in a “cloud of unknowing,” with what the author calls a “dart of longing love.”
The method it describes is simple and repetitive: hold the mind on a single short word, such as “God” or “love,” and return to it whenever thoughts pull the attention away. This practice is one of the historical roots of modern Centering Prayer, developed by Trappist monks in the 1970s. The text belongs to the apophatic, or “negative,” tradition that traces back to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which approaches God by setting aside what can be said or known. It survives in seventeen manuscripts and was largely unknown until it was printed in 1877; Evelyn Underhill’s 1922 edition, reprinted by Dover, brought it to a wide modern readership.
He may well be loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never.
Chapter 6 (Evelyn Underhill translation)
First lines
God, unto whom all hearts be open, and unto whom all will speaketh, and unto whom no privy thing is hid: I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee, and worthily praise Thee. Amen.
Reception
The Cloud of Unknowing was not widely read in its own time, surviving in only seventeen medieval manuscripts — fewer than the works of Richard Rolle or Walter Hilton — which scholars attribute to its narrow address to solitary contemplatives and its focus on advanced stages of prayer. Its modern reputation is much larger: it is now treated as a classic of Western mysticism and a primary source for the contemporary Centering Prayer movement associated with Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Meninger. Commentators have noted its resemblance to forms of Buddhist and transcendental meditation, a comparison some find illuminating and others consider loose. Its authorship remains unresolved: Walter Hilton has been proposed and generally rejected, and the Carthusian attribution is plausible but unproven.
Frequently asked
Who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing?
The author is unknown. They were an English writer of the late fourteenth century, probably a cleric and possibly a Carthusian monk. Walter Hilton has been suggested but is generally doubted, so the text is always published as anonymous.
What is the “cloud of unknowing”?
It is the author’s image for the gap between the human mind and God. Because God cannot be grasped by thought, the contemplative is told to rest in this darkness and reach toward God through love rather than understanding, while pushing all other thoughts beneath a separate “cloud of forgetting.”
How is the book connected to Centering Prayer?
Its core instruction — holding the mind on a single short word and returning to it whenever the attention wanders — is one of the historical sources for Centering Prayer, a form of Christian meditation developed by Trappist monks in the 1970s. Thomas Keating cited the text directly.