The Cloude of Unknowyng

The Cloude of Unknowyng is an extremely intimidating text, coming to the modern audience from an age long past, where Germanic pines still teemed with fey spirits, the basket-hilted sword was a few decades away, and the saints were believed to have fought alongside the men-at-arms and knights. The language is romantic, flowery, exciting, bombastic, demanding, and yet for all this, remains honest and plain. Were I to retitle this book for the modern reader, I would call it “Practical Spirituality 101.”

 The title is possesses, however, is not insignificant to the matters discussed. The “cloud of unknowing” rather means in modern vernacular, a cloud unable to be known: in this sense, God, Heaven, and divinity. These things are, fundamentally, unknowable to us, their magnitude overwhelming and their greatness so remarkable as to be surreal. And yet, to be not able to be known does not mean not able to be comprehended. That is to say, we can learn intimately about a handful of tuna, but to learn everything about the ocean is a task that would split our skulls like a shattered dam.

 For its part, the Cloud of Unknowing elects to examine just these parts: what do we know we can do, as spiritual beings in our garments of flesh and bone, to enrich ourselves and live wholesomely? The repeated answer sounds off like a theme with each chapter - virtue. Nothing else works; nothing else lasts.

 The chapters are organized in such a way as to address various struggles or trials of virtue, with titles as “Which is chaste love; and how in some creatures such sensible comforts be but seldom, and in some right oft,” and “That men should have great wariness so that they understand not bodily a thing that is meant ghostly; and specially it is good to be wary in understanding of this word in, and of this word up.” Some are indeed profoundly short, giving small writs of advice mundane advice one could find in a fortune cookie. Others span long paragraphs, giving myriad examples of conduct or raising and smiting objections.

 If I may be so bold, I would posit that the Cloud of Unknowing was the first self-help book of our world. This is neither to decry the mastery of the work nor endorse the publication of the various sacred texts of Mammon (some books do indeed wish to help souls in pain, yet others hardly veil their “get rich quick” sermons), but a point of fact.

Since the ink dried on the first edition, I hope it will not be forgotten until the true referenced cloud of unknowing has been lifted, when the grey curtains of the mundane are drawn, and divinity welcomes us.