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I finally got around to reading the spiritual classic, The Cloud of Unknowing. Over the years, from time to time, I dipped into it but had never read it carefully, contemplatively. I was moved to do so by seeing a new translation of the classic by Carmen Acevedo Butcher picked up on one of The Cloud of Unknowing year end, ' best books of the year' columns. The column writer was not a usual suspect, i. Acevedo Butcher is a specialist on the medieval English in which the anonymous fourteenth century writer of The Cloud of Unknowing penned his advice to an also anonymous twenty-four year old aspirant to contemplative prayer. She is able, in her translation, to capture something of the puns and word play, as well as the alliteration, found in the The Cloud of Unknowing text cf. The Cloud of Unknowing, Boston, Shambhala, The author of The Cloud enumerates three forms of prayer: reading by which he means lectio pia, a contemplative reading ; ordinary prayer presumably with words, out loud or silently The Cloud of Unknowing using imagination and contemplative prayer. The latter is a kind of prayer of silence or quiet. It is akin to what is called ' centering prayer'. The only real way to read The Cloud is The Cloud of Unknowing, meditatively and over an extended period of time, allowing each small chapter to sink in. In other words, one can begin by using The Cloud as, itself, a form of lectio pia. The author of The Cloud recommends two key images for our prayer life. This Unknowing is, paradoxically, a kind of knowing by not knowing. As the author asserts: " We can not think our way to God. He can be loved but not thought. We cannot really 'eff' the ineffable! The heart of prayer lies in a supple reaching out The Cloud of Unknowing love to God The Cloud of Unknowing allowing God to reach back to us. The essence of prayer is found less in thought than in The Cloud of Unknowing and in our will. For our part, all we need for prayer is a simple reaching out to God, what the author The Cloud of Unknowing The Cloud calls a ' naked intent for God'. In prayer there is a kind of darkness about God but we, nevertheless, do dwell in him and also a, concomitant ' cloud of forgetting' where we let creation or our sins also fall away. In a lovely quote, the author urges us to " take God at face value, as he is. The Cloud of Unknowing his good graciousness, as you would accept a plain, simple, soft compress when sick. Take hold of him and press him against your unhealthy self, just as you are, and try to let your The Cloud of Unknowing touch the kind and generous God, just as he is, because those who touch him know good health that never ends. The contemplative prayer found The Cloud of Unknowing The Cloud differs from Ignatian contemplation which involves a kind of imaginative placing of ourselves in the gospel scenes and a strong appeal to our five senses to touch, taste, feel, smell etc. Ignatian contemplation is by way of images. The Cloud's The Cloud of Unknowing is apophatic, i. So, its author enjoins: " those who start the inner work of contemplation with the belief that they're supposed to hear, smell, see, taste or touch spiritual things, inside or outside are truly misled. He urges no strain. Prayer is like sleep, The Cloud of Unknowing and not work, as such. To be sure, contemplation is God's gift. We can only bring a longing to pray. Even a short prayer can penetrate to heaven. The author of The Cloud recommends that we take a single syllable or short phrase such as, for example, my God, my hope etc. He conjoins: " Select only the words God nudges you toward. If nothing else, patiently wait at the door and let God allow you to enter in. If you have consolation, well and good. But in any event, persist in the practice of contemplative prayer, even if you experience dryness or find it painful. Whether praying with utter dryness or consolation, we can not know " which of these ways is holier or dearer to God. Only God knows. I don't. The Cloud does concur with Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises on the need for a discernment of spirits. Ignatius The Cloud of Unknowing there was one form of consolation, what he calls ' consolation without a cause', which we could never doubt came to us from God. Other forms of consolation sweet or good feelings might come initially from God but, then, get perverted or used by the evil spirit. In a similar vein, the author of The Cloud also allows a kind of consolation " A foretaste of the eternal reward They can be good or evil. If they're good, they are the work of the The Cloud of Unknowing angel, and if they're evil, they are he work of the evil angel. In prayer we need both humility and patience. Humility is not just a sense of our sin taken separately which is almost never from God, if not simultaneously connected to God's surprising love for us. In real humility we know the extent that we are sordid, sad, weak creatures but no less the object of God's superabundant love, humbled by " the amazing glory and goodness of God. It touches and changes us bu usually not as soon or as suddenly as we like. Contemplation is never an interruption, argues the author, to our daily life. Whether we prefer Ignatius' way of images or the image-less way of The Cloud, all prayer is a simple reaching out to God what The Cloud calls ' a naked intent for God' and allowing God to reach back to us. Remember that God tailors, in his personal pedagogy, contemplative prayer to us. In the end, as The Cloud's author insists: " If you want to find your soul, look at what your love"--and, I would add, at who loves you! Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more. In All Things. John A. Coleman January 10, Show Comments 2. Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more. In short, one learns to love God, one's self, and others better by reading this book. That fact in itself is nothing short of remarkable! This is a nice synopsis of the Cloud, John. I've been reading it off and on for many years, knowing the first time that I read it that it had something to say to me. Finally, after so many years of reading and talking about ha! After The Cloud of Unknowing tied up in knots with word prayers and The Cloud of Unknowing, contemplative really is a gift to me - I feel that I was born to pray like this. Most popular. 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Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous. The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous. James Walsh Translator. Tim Farrington Goodreads Author Foreword. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published September 1st by HarperCollins first published The Cloud of Unknowing Details The Cloud of Unknowing Title. Other Editions 2. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought The Cloud of Unknowing this book, The Cloud of Unknowing sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Cloud of Unknowingplease sign up. Be the first to ask a question about The Cloud of Unknowing. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The The Cloud of Unknowing of Unknowing. Sep 20, Edvard Taylor rated it it was amazing. This beautiful, extraordinary and timeless book by an anonymous 14th century author is one of the greatest mystical treatises of any time in any religion. It is to be most warmly recommended to all true and sincere students of mysticism. It radiates the warmth of St. Francis de Sales, touches in a uniquely loving and gentle way on the sufferings on the soul immersed in the dark night of the spirit, offers guidance on ways of contemplation and the attainment of true humility, which, as the author This beautiful, extraordinary and timeless book by an anonymous 14th century author is one of the greatest mystical treatises of any time in any religion. Francis de Sales, touches in a uniquely loving and gentle way on the sufferings on the soul immersed in the dark night of the spirit, offers guidance on The Cloud of Unknowing of The Cloud of Unknowing and the attainment of true humility, which, as the author asserts, is the prerequisite of self-knowledge preparing the way for the love of God which the purified soul must enter through the cloud of unknowing. View 1 comment. Recommended to David by: Found it hidden away in a second hand bookstore. Shelves: christian. An esoteric medieval Christian text 17 January Well, most authors that I know want as many people to The Cloud of Unknowing their book as possible, yet with this guy whoever he was, though it is believed that he was a monk opens, and closes, the book with who he doesn't want to read this book, which is basically anybody who does not have some intense spiritual epiphany. The Cloud of Unknowing, the version I read was a translation from the Middle English text, and I am told in the introduction that a lot of the beautiful an An esoteric medieval Christian text 17 January Well, most authors that I know want as many people to read their book as possible, yet with this guy whoever he was, though it is believed that he was a monk opens, and closes, the book with who he doesn't want to read this book, which is basically anybody who does not have some intense spiritual epiphany. Okay, the version I read was a translation from the Middle English text, and I am told in the introduction that a lot of the beautiful and flowery language has been lost in the translation not surprisingly so I am unable to really comment on the poetic form. However, I must say that I am probably one of those The Cloud of Unknowing that he didn't really want reading this book because, well, I didn't think all that much of it. In a way, I am not surprised that it was written by a monk because the entire book is an exposition on God that is the Christian god and seems to be stuck entirely in the esoteric world. Personally, I really do not find any benefit from reading such books that have no connection to the world in which we live, not The Cloud of Unknowing say that I do not like esoteric writings — some of them can be quite good — but this seems to be clearly written by somebody who had no understanding of what the world was like outside the walls of his monastery. The reason that I rate the book so low is because I find good Christian writers are able to actively engage in the world The Cloud of Unknowing them, and while I do not necessarily agree with what a lot of them write, I do know that the good ones live in the world and interact with real people, as opposed to the monks of the medieval world who shut themselves away to spend their lives contemplating the nature of God. It reminds me of the story of this guy back in Roman times who built himself a column and sat on top of it so that he could escape sin, The Cloud of Unknowing it did not matter how high the column was he could not escape the world. It is not that I have a thing against the monks of the medieval world though because they were active in preserving many of the texts that have been passed down to us from the classical world of the Greeks and Romans. Without these monks we would not have Homer or Cicero nor would have we have, surprisingly, Aristophanes though it was suggested that as they transcribed his plays they would make comments about how dirty some of them were. As for this book though, while it may be short, it is probably one to give a miss because, beyond giving us an idea of how some monks spent their life contemplating God, there is not really all that much that I got out of it. View all 5 comments. Oct 12, Gary Guinn rated it it was amazing. He writes particularly for an unidentified younger monk who is considering the call to a contemplative life. The little book about pages is the first such work in the English language, and has become a classic, influencing such later masters as St. John of the Cross and Teilhard de Chardin. In down-to-earth but articulate prose that is often beautiful, the monk admonishes, warns, and encourages his younger colleague, from a decidedly The Cloud of Unknowing view of the world. The true contemplative must, he says, when he practices contemplation, shut out the external world and all thoughts of that world and turn his mind entirely on the God of pure love. The God of love, of all creation, cannot be known, cannot be conceived of with the human mind, which Augustine tells us is utterly depraved and cannot do anything pure. And that is why all thoughts, images, desires of the outside world must be left under a cloud of forgetting. Anyone interested in meditation--Christian, Buddhist, or whatever--should read The Cloud of Unknowing. View 2 comments. 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. This book was not meant for me, and it certainly was not meant for The Cloud of Unknowing. After a short description of the work I will entertain The Cloud of Unknowing with a mangled version of text snippets. The Cloud of Unknowing can be fairly seen as a philosophy of ignor 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. The Cloud of Unknowing can be fairly seen as a philosophy of ignorance, or so it would seem to those of us who are beastly and unghostly. The author writes to the true contemplatives of the church, and advises that the best way to God, for those who are able, is to direct their full attention, love, and effort to addressing themselves, in all meekness, to the cloud of The Cloud of Unknowing that permanently stands between them and their God. To do so The Cloud of Unknowing, one must give no more thought or concern to this earth, the people in it, the past, sin, or even oneself or the goodness of God. It is a great travail, with both ecstasies and torments, and yet God can never be fully known in this life. But if we are in condition to receive his grace, and God grants it, we can be oned with God to the degree The Cloud of Unknowing it is permitted within this life, and that oneness, if it be achieved, is the only thing The Cloud of Unknowing persist in the eternal, while the duration of this life is so brief. Language: Reading this was a good experience in terms of exposure to a dialect of Middle English. It seems likely that someone at some time modernized some spellings while retaining the Middle English grammar and diction. Musings: The author engages in an interesting bit of grammar analysis to arrive at one part of his philosophy. The Cloud of Unknowing spends some time relating a lesson from the story of Martha and her sister Mary not to be confused with the various other Marys of the New testament. Jesus The Cloud of Unknowing the two sisters, Martha makes herself busy in preparing to feed and entertain The Cloud of Unknowing, and Mary only sits at his feet adoring him. There must be three parts, of which The Cloud of Unknowing chose the best. I could probably make an infinity of additional observations the relationship between ghostly and bodily resembles method acting, achieving results by not caring about results is like good poker play, and the bodily workings of the contemplative are like the jnani whose outer self carries out its tasks mindlessly while the true self is realized Keep thou the windows and the door, for flies and enemies assailing. All men living in earth be wonderfully holpen of this work, thou wottest not how. Whoso heareth this work either be read or spoken of, and weeneth that it may, or should, be come to by travail in their wits, shall fall either into frenzies, or else into other great mischiefs of ghostly sins and devils' deceits; through the which he may lightly be lost, both life and soul, without any end. It is but a sudden stirring, and as it were unadvised, speedily sprinting unto God as a sparkle from the coal. Such a proud, curious wit behoveth always be borne down and stiffly trodden down under foot. I would leave all that thing that I can think, and choose to my love that thing that The Cloud of Unknowing cannot think. Love may reach to God in this life, but not knowing. All the whiles that the soul dwelleth in this deadly The Cloud of Unknowing, evermore is the sharpness of our understanding in beholding of all ghostly things, but most specially of God, mingled with some manner of fantasy; for the which our work should be unclean. Yeah, and if it were lawful to do—as it is not—put out thine eyes, cut thou out thy tongue of thy mouth, stop thou thine ears and thy nose never so The Cloud of Unknowing, though thou shear away thy members, and do The Cloud of Unknowing the pain to thy body that thou mayest or canst think: all this would help thee right nought. Yet will stirring and rising of sin be in thee. Meekness in itself is nought else, but a true knowing and feeling of a man's self as he is. And therefore swink and sweat in all that thou canst and mayest, for to get thee a true knowing and a feeling of thyself as thou art. They say, that God sendeth the cow, but not by the horn. Virtue is nought else but an ordained and a measured affection, plainly The Cloud of Unknowing unto God for Himself. Although it be good to think upon the kindness of God, and to love Him and praise Him for it, yet it is far better to think upon the naked being of Him, and to The Cloud of Unknowing Him and praise Him for Himself. As it were a cloud of unknowing, thou knowest not what, saving that thou feelest in thy will a naked intent unto God. Ween not, for I call it a darkness or a cloud, that it The Cloud of Unknowing any cloud congealed of the humours that flee in the air, nor yet any darkness such as is in thine house on nights when the candle is The Cloud of Unknowing. Thou art well further from Him when thou hast no cloud of forgetting betwixt thee and all the creatures that ever be made. Time is made for man, and not man for time. The Cloud of Unknowing Index

Jump to navigation. Gallacher Editor. The Cloud of Unknowing, a masterpiece of simplicity that distills a complex mystical epistemology and discipline into engagingly readable prose, embodies a paradox. It offers a method by which the suitably disposed reader may practice an advanced and even austere form of contemplation - the divesting of the mind of all images and concepts through an encounter with a "nothing and a nowhere" that leads to the mysterious and unfathomable being of God Himself. Yet as the account of this exercise unfolds, the genial and hospitable tone of the author humanizes the austerity of the method and persuasively draws the reader into what Evelyn Underhill calls "the loving discernment of Reality" Sequence, p. We can begin to understand the meaning of the Cloud by looking at what may be the The Cloud of Unknowing famous quotation in Western mysticism, the passage in the Confessions, IX10, where Augustine muses upon the ecstasy at Ostia, an experience that he had in a final conversation with his mother, Monica McGinn, p. Confessions, trans. Sheed, pp. What is striking about this passage is the combination of two movements: a sweeping review of nature, human psychology, and the world of signs, followed by the "silencing" or negation of everything that is not God. These two movements present us with affirmation and negation; or, in terms more proper to mystical discourse, with the kataphatic and apophatic phases of the mystical ascent. Moreover, the passage from Augustine, which is richly affirmative, is a fine example of illumination and union, which, together with purgation, are the mystic's three traditional types of experience. The Cloud of Unknowing, by contrast, is essentially apophatic in its emphasis and focuses almost entirely on the "silencing" described by Augustine: it collapses the meditation on nature to brief allusion, and discusses the soul's activities only in the most practical manner. Perhaps most important, whereas Augustine refers to "that one moment The Cloud of Unknowing understanding" intelligentiathe The Cloud of Unknowing of the Cloud emphasizes the movement described earlier when, as all things grew silent, "the very soul grew silent to herself and by not thinking of self mounted beyond self. The Cloud of Unknowing the Augustinian tradition, the role of the mind has considerable emphasis, but the activity of the spiritual heart, the will, is by no means neglected. Similarly in the accounts of those writers who seem to favor an affective approach almost exclusively, there is a final celebration of the mind as well. The Cloud 's de-emphasis on the activity of the intelligence represents a seemingly archetypal impulse hinted at even in Platonic texts: that the ultimate reality which the mystic seeks to experience is finally beyond the grasp of the intellect Louth, p. On the other hand, it seems that since in Platonism there is a kinship syngeneia between The Cloud of Unknowing soul and the The Cloud of Unknowing, the search for knowledge of the forms is a homecoming, the return of the soul to its proper nature. Such an ontological bond does seem to result in a significant continuity The Cloud of Unknowing the initial and later stages of Platonic contemplation. Platonism conceived the contemplative ascent as a process that required successive purifications until the soul regained its pristine condition, although the final vision of the supreme Forms of the Good and the Beautiful is outside the soul's capacity and is simply given or revealed Lees, p. An important concept in the Cloud - "the sovereinneste pointe" of the spirit or of contemplation see lines 15; ; - can suggest the richness of traditional elements present in the work, and can serve to focus both the continuities and the differences in the tradition of contemplation. The concept begins in Stoic philosophy as a reference to the "single faculty of the soul from which The Cloud of Unknowing others were held to derive" Lees, p. In association with what is considered to be this highest part, the intellectual and affective views of contemplative experience come into focus and interact. But in the main tradition followed by the Cloud, the intellect and the imagination, The Cloud of Unknowing initiate the human ascent to God, must be abandoned so that contemplation The Cloud of Unknowing proceed by negation, or the apophatic method. By contrast, a competing term from Augustine - ratio superior, "the superior reason" - entailed a significantly different view of the mystical ascent, espoused especially by the twelfth-century Victorines, Hugh and Richard. Augustine believed that "an intellectual 'vision' of God is the goal of mystical contemplation" TeSelle, p. For Augustine, the superior reason is fulfilled by wisdom, just as the inferior reason is completed by knowledge. The wisdom that belongs to the upper part of reason is itself the image of God and The Cloud of Unknowing the divine reasons. Later medieval writers refined these insights, but, although The Cloud of Unknowing undergoes subtle variations, Augustinian wisdom, or sapientia, persists. Given the wide range of Augustine's views, however, the emphasis on the intellect must be qualified by his observation that the best experience of God is to be found not in knowledge but in love, a view that signals his major influence on the affective mysticism of the Middle Ages as well. In fact, his treatment of the will and the affections is so central to his mystical The Cloud of Unknowing that he could affirm, with considerable controversial impact, that the act of loving one's neighbor is an The Cloud of Unknowing of God TeSelle, p. Nevertheless, continuity and "the efficacy of the purified intellect. Consequently, a principal mark of the Augustinian tradition is illumination, the second stage of the mystical ascent, the one that, according to Evelyn Underhill Mysticism, p. In the later Middle Ages, the two The Cloud of Unknowing emphases in mysticism take their place in a more widely debated controversy as to whether the intellect or the will is the primary or most noble human power. This is a difference that Dante attempts to reconcile in the Paradiso, XI,by celebrating as complementary both the splendore that illumines the intellect and the ardore that inflames the will. At the Council of Nicaea inthe clarification of the doctrine that God created the world out of nothing, ex nihilo, had a profound impact on another strain of the Christian mystical tradition. The doctrine denies the soul's natural kinship with the divine and affirms an uncrossable ontological gap between the creator and created human nature, an opposition that does not occur in the teachings of Plato The Cloud of Unknowing Plotinus. In the Platonic tradition, the most important ontological distinction is between the spiritual and the material, the soul and the body. In the Nicaean view, the most important distinction is between creator and creation, with the soul having a special kinship with the body Louth, p. Because of this radical difference, the Christian mystical ascent, as influenced by Gregory of Nyssa, is unlike the Platonic in that it puts greater restrictions on the use of The Cloud of Unknowing intellect, which has no natural kinship with divinity. Ultimate reality, in this tradition, is more emphatically beyond the grasp of the human mind. Most significant, however, is the key event that bridges this gap and makes union with God possible - the Incarnation of the Word. Athanasius seems to have responded to the Council of Nicaea by rejecting the Platonic tenet that the soul can reach the divine by the theoria of contemplation. But Gregory of Nyssa, taking up a somewhat undeveloped pattern in Origen, presented three overlapping stages of the mystical ascent which eventually develop into the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive Lees, p. In the unitive phase, Gregory eliminates the activity of the intellect entirely and depicts a darkness in which the mystic feels the presence of God through love; and it is this tradition to The Cloud of Unknowing The Cloud of Unknowing belongs primarily. Affirming the image and likeness of God in the human person, but denying any identity, Gregory insisted that man can never grasp the divine nature as it is in itself by means of the intelligence, so that final union with God must take place by a kind of unknowing, although the intellect is intensely active in the early stages of the ascent Louth, p. Together with love, this unknowing, or negation of knowledge in the ordinary sense, is the main activity of the apophatic method, although affirmation, the kataphatic movement, is frequently present. Gregory of Nyssa's insistence that God cannot be grasped by the mind enters into the thought of the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a mysterious, sixth-century Syrian monk. Denis, as he is simply designated by the author of the Cloud linewas thought in the Middle Ages to have been the disciple of St. Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostlesand consequently his works were considered immensely authoritative. He was, however, a formidable thinker in his own right, and Aquinas in the thirteenth century quotes him about times Pelikan, p. A central tenet for Denis, as it was for Gregory of Nyssa, is the abandonment of the understanding in order to enter the final stage of mystical contemplation in favor of the will and the affectivity. The mysticism of Denis the Areopagite provides a system that becomes paradigmatic for the West. He works out a three-fold analogy between modes of being, modes of apprehension, and types of theology. That is, there are the ontological dimensions of the sensible, the intelligible, and the divine. Apprehending these dimensions are the imagination, the intellect, and a faculty "above mind. The first The Cloud of Unknowing are kataphatic: they affirm God "by assigning to him names derived from the properties of creatures"; the third, mystical theology, is apophatic and denies that any of these names can be validly applied to God, who absolutely transcends nature and the human mind. Mystical theology then, entering the darkness that is above mind, "ascends to the creator himself" Emery, p. Denis does not say what the apprehension above mind is, but the Cloud author speaks for the tradition when he asserts that the contemplative rises through love "entren with affeccioun into derknes" Hodgson p. This transcendent power of love, however, is by no means unique to the Dionysian tradition, because it plays a principal role not only in Augustine, but also in Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, and the Victorines, Hugh and Richard. The hierarchical ascent through the faculties, which is described in our initial quotation from The Cloud of Unknowing and which is almost universal in the mystical tradition, appears in an elaborated yet concise way in one of the most attractive mystical treatises of the Middle Ages, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum The Mind's Journey unto Godby Bonaventure. Both Bonaventure's Mind's Journey and the Cloud are relatively short and come close to being about The Cloud of Unknowing same length. Bonaventure's treatise is a kind of medieval devotional summa, in that he provides a compendium of symbolism, epistemology, metaphysics, theology, and prayerful exhortation. It is almost a handbook of medieval thought in its succinct offering of diverse information within what might be called a mystical ontology. Covering the three categories of the Dionysian tradition, he begins with a symbolic examination of the sensible vestiges of God in the universe, proceeds to the intelligible realm in the image of the Trinity reflected in The Cloud of Unknowing workings of the mind, and concludes with the divine names of being and goodness as they apply to the Trinity itself. The Mind's Journey unto God contains seven chapters, but interestingly, The Cloud of Unknowing the last alludes to the experience addressed by the whole of the Cloud. This contrasting proportion illustrates a central difference in scale and emphasis between the Cloud and the Mind's Journey, a difference that can also serve to distinguish The Cloud of Unknowing Cloud from its more immediate sources and clarify its own simplicity and power. Most important, the Cloud has, as a determining principle of structure, a practical technique for moving beyond illumination to union, a transitional praxis virtually absent from Bonaventure's treatise. On the other hand, the Cloud 's references to union as such are spelled out only in brief statements at the end of the work. Yet even though the Cloud skips the vigorous and explicit exercise of the imagination and reason that make Bonaventure's treatise so compelling and vital, it conveys, indirectly and by allusion, much incidental insight and information about the role of the senses, imagination, and intellect. The reason for this is that in order to define precisely what this non-conceptual focusing and its effects are, he must, with adequate detail, clarify what it is not. In other words, although the main concern of the Cloud is apophatic, kataphatic affirmations, although brief and allusive, occur in a persistent dialectic. The achievement of the Cloud in directness and persuasiveness becomes dramatically clear when compared to the methods of two of its more immediate sources, the works of the Victorine, Thomas Gallus, and the Carthusian, Hugh of Balma. Moreover, the often subtle relationships between the faculties of knowing and loving further qualify these differences. Thomas Gallus, who influenced Bonaventure as well as the Cloud author, ultimately derives the different stages in the progress towards union from Denis Lees, p. For "the devoted rather than the highly educated" Walsh, in Lees, p. The combination was a more usable The Cloud of Unknowing than the translation made by John Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century, or John Saracenus in the twelfth century. Since Gallus follows The Cloud of Unknowing quite closely and since he influenced Bonaventure, a somewhat detailed look at his thought can provide a sense of the tradition in a form that directly influenced the The Cloud of Unknowing of Unknowing and at the same time convey the intellectual calm of its contrasting simplicity. As in Denis's treatises and in Bonaventure's The Mind's Journey unto God, there are a somewhat overwhelming nine levels of ascent. This elaboration of the three phases of Origen The Cloud of Unknowing Gregory of Nyssa, though it comes from Denis, probably owes something to Augustine's festival of triads in the De Trinitate. The Cloud of Unknowing multiplication of triads exists also in Proclus, who is the immediate Neoplatonic source of Denis himself and who extensively develops the traditional threefold ontology of the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul Louth, p. More precisely, in Gallus there are three groups of levels, or mansions, and each group itself contains three subdivisions. Paralleling each of the nine levels in Gallus are the nine orders of the Celestial Hierarchy - angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominations, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim. The The Cloud of Unknowing of such an elaborate schema, which occurs also in Bonaventure's mystical treatise, would seem to lie in how effectively it presents the transcendence of God, and its insistence that the ascent does not take place all at once, but by deliberate and careful gradations, a point suggested by the use of the Latin passus in Bonaventure. Interestingly, this term also describes the stages The Cloud of Unknowing the Middle English poem, Piers Plowman. In startling contrast is the simplicity of the Cloud, where avoiding such complexities seems to be a principal aim. In spite of the numerical complexity of these schemas, the pattern is fundamentally and even simply determined by a dialectical emphasis on nature and grace, reason and affectivity. In the first mansion of the The Cloud of Unknowing of God which is the soul, understanding and affectivity operate naturally in the natural sphere, although helped by illuminating grace. In the second mansion, nature and grace The Cloud of Unknowing together. In the The Cloud of Unknowing mansion, the understanding and affectivity are illuminated and supported by grace alone. This final mansion is governed by synderesis, a widely used term "given to intellect and will as they work together in the way of contemplation" Walsh, in Lees, p. Historically synonymous with two other Stoic terms for the principal part of the soul, to hegemonikon and to anotaton meros, it becomes in the Christian tradition "the natural impulse by virtue of which the The Cloud of Unknowing is the image of the Sovereign Good and naturally adheres to it. This impulse, when perfectly purified by the love of God, is called the scintilla, or 'spark' of the synderesis - a phrase used by Bonaventure also, for it flies above the soul like the spark above the fire" Walsh, in Lees, p. A similar image is used in the Cloud line and Book Three, The Cloud of Unknowing 9, of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, where the First Mover calls back the souls scattered throughout the universe "like leaping flames" trans. Green, p. This final stage of union, which is where much of the diversity in the tradition comes, is subdivided into three further gradations, once more determined by a dialectical emphasis on grace, affectivity, and types of understanding: the first, corresponding to those angels The Cloud of Unknowing Thrones, is the reception of infused grace and the divine attraction of the intellect. The second, a point on which Hugh of Balma will strongly disagree with Gallus, is the perfection of intellectual The Cloud of Unknowing by infused illumination. In Hugh of Balma, by contrast, the intellect exercises no initiative at all in what corresponds to these last three subdivisions. The The Cloud of Unknowing gradation of the last stage in Gallus is the perfection of union in the apex affectus, the "summit of the emotions" Lees, p. Although the loving power is non-conceptual, Gallus insists that it is nevertheless cognitive. https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4573335/normal_5fc3caf674175.pdf https://cdn.sqhk.co/davidflorestt/8ijTjht/an-introduction-to-traditional-logic-classical-reasoning-for-contemporary-1st-edition-47.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4572860/normal_5fc4f08e3324e.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4568822/normal_5fc5aac6424f6.pdf https://cdn.sqhk.co/rogerturnercm/aIWgitU/shape-detection-in-computer-vision-using-the-hough-transform-96.pdf https://cdn-cms.f-static.net/uploads/4569065/normal_5fc355a026687.pdf