Quick Answer
The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous fourteenth-century English mystical text teaching that God cannot be reached by intellect but only by love. The soul must press all thoughts and images under a "cloud of forgetting" and direct a naked intent of love upward through the "cloud of unknowing" toward God. A single short word ("God," "love") serves as a dart against distraction. It is the direct source of modern Centering Prayer and one of the most practically precise texts in the Christian contemplative tradition.
Key Takeaways
- Two clouds: The cloud of unknowing (between soul and God, impenetrable by intellect) and the cloud of forgetting (between soul and all created things, under which all thoughts must be pressed). Both are essential to the practice.
- By love, not intellect: God cannot be grasped by thought; the intellect hits the cloud and bounces back. Only love, a naked, wordless, contentless intent of the will, can press through toward God.
- The short sharp dart: A single monosyllabic word (God, love) used as a focused point of will when distractions arise, not as an object of meditation but as a weapon returned to again and again.
- Dionysian roots: The Cloud's teaching is the practical application of Pseudo-Dionysius's apophatic theology, filtered through the affective interpretation of Thomas Gallus and applied in the warm, urgent style of a skilled spiritual director.
- Rudolf Steiner connection: The Cloud's "naked intent" stripped of all concepts parallels Steiner's account of pure thinking and spiritual intuition, where ordinary conceptual cognition is transcended without losing consciousness.
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The Anonymous Author and the Text
The Cloud of Unknowing is a fourteenth-century Middle English text of unknown authorship, written around 1375, addressed as a letter of spiritual direction to a young man of approximately twenty-four years old who has been drawn from the active Christian life toward solitary contemplative prayer. The author writes not as a theological systematizer but as a spiritual director with obvious first-hand experience of the states he describes: the text has the warmth, urgency, and practical specificity of a teacher who knows both the heights and the difficulties of the path he is recommending.
The author's identity has been debated for centuries. Internal evidence points to an English man, almost certainly a religious (a monk or canon rather than a secular priest), writing in the East Midlands dialect of Middle English. Candidates have included a Carthusian monk (the Carthusians were the most strictly contemplative order in England at the time), an Augustinian canon, and various named individuals, but none of the attributions has won scholarly consensus. What is clear is that the author was theologically sophisticated, familiar with both Latin scholastic theology and vernacular spiritual literature, and deeply formed by the tradition he was transmitting.
The Corpus: Not Just One Text
The Cloud of Unknowing is the best known of a group of related works by the same author. He also wrote The Book of Privy Counselling (a shorter, more advanced companion piece), the Epistle of Prayer, the Epistle of Discretion, and English translations of Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology (which he called Denis Hid Divinity) and Richard of St Victor's Benjamin Minor. Reading these texts together gives a fuller picture of the author's theological thought than The Cloud alone. Denis Hid Divinity is particularly illuminating: it shows exactly which Dionysian passages the author considered most important and how he understood the relationship between Dionysian apophatic theology and his own practical teaching.
The text was written for a specific recipient, someone the author calls his "ghostly friend in God" (spiritual friend), who has been through what the author calls the first and second degrees of the active life and the first degree of the contemplative life. He is not writing for beginners in Christianity, and he explicitly says so, even urging that the book be kept from those not ready for it: "I charge thee and I beseech thee, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, that thou neither read this book, write it, nor speak of it... unless it be to those who have by a full will and a whole intent purposed them to be perfect followers of Christ."
The Two Clouds: Unknowing and Forgetting
The central structural image of the text is the two clouds, and understanding both is necessary for understanding the practice the author recommends.
The cloud of unknowing lies between the soul and God. When the contemplative tries to grasp God with the intellect, the intellect hits this cloud and bounces back. God is not merely difficult to understand: God transcends all comprehension, all concepts, all images. The cloud is not a problem to be solved or an obstacle to be overcome by greater intellectual effort. It is a permanent feature of the soul's relationship to God, and the only movement that can press through it is not thought but love.
The cloud of forgetting lies beneath the soul, between it and all created things, including memories, good thoughts, and even holy images. The author is quite specific and rather surprising here: the contemplative must press down under this second cloud not only distracting and sinful thoughts but also good and holy ones. Even thoughts about Christ's Passion, Mary, the saints, heaven, and one's own spiritual progress must be pressed under the cloud of forgetting during the time of contemplative prayer. This is not because these things are bad (the author is emphatic that they are very good in their proper place and time) but because during the time of contemplative prayer, any thought, however holy, interrupts the simple naked intent toward God.
The Counterintuitive Core
The most surprising aspect of the Cloud's teaching for many readers is that the author insists on pressing down even good and holy thoughts during contemplation. People often assume that contemplative prayer means thinking about God more deeply or imagining divine realities more vividly. The author says the opposite: all thinking, all imaging, all content, must be pressed under the cloud of forgetting. The soul must be left with nothing, directed toward a God of whom it can form no image, seeking only to love what it cannot know. This is the apophatic tradition at its most demanding, and the author is aware that it will seem strange: he acknowledges that what he is asking seems impossible but insists it is exactly what is required.
The spatial metaphor of the two clouds is precise and pedagogically useful. The soul stands between them: the cloud of forgetting below, pressing everything created downward; the cloud of unknowing above, with God hidden beyond it. The soul's only task is to press upward through the darkness with the naked force of love. This two-directional movement, renouncing all attachments below while reaching above all comprehension, is the structural form of apophatic contemplation made concrete in an English vernacular idiom.
By Love May He Be Gotten: The Central Teaching
The most frequently quoted line from The Cloud of Unknowing is the author's statement of his central principle: "By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never." This is not a claim that thought and reason are unimportant in the spiritual life. The author is writing for people who have already been thoroughly formed by scriptural reading, theological study, vocal prayer, and active charity. Reason has its proper place and has already done its work. The claim is more specific: in the moment of contemplative prayer, the deepest contact with God is made not by any cognitive activity but by a pure movement of love.
What does the author mean by love here? He is careful to distinguish it from emotional feeling. Love in this context is not a pleasant sensation in the chest or a warm rush of devotion, though those things have their own value. The love the author recommends is a movement of the will: a pure, naked intent directed toward God, stripped of all content, all motivation, all awareness of oneself as the one loving. It is sometimes called "naked" because it is uncovered, not clothed in any particular form or feeling, and sometimes called "blind" because it does not see God clearly but reaches toward God in the darkness of the cloud of unknowing.
The Role of the Will
The Cloud of Unknowing places the will, not the intellect, at the center of the highest human capacity for knowing God. This is a specifically Franciscan and Augustinian emphasis (the primacy of love over knowledge) as opposed to the Thomistic and Dominican emphasis on the primacy of intellect. The author was familiar with both traditions but chose clearly: the highest act of the spiritual life is not to know God but to love God, and this loving is an act of will. In this he is aligned with Duns Scotus's voluntarism and with the broader Franciscan tradition, even though his immediate sources are primarily Dionysian and Victorine.
The author also emphasizes the receptivity of this love. The contemplative is not generating love out of their own resources and aiming it at God. Rather, in pressing upward with the naked intent, the soul makes itself available to a love that is already present and active in it but usually covered over by the activity of thought. The movement is as much a letting go as a reaching: letting go of all the activity that fills the soul so that what is already there, the divine love at the ground of the soul, can be recognized and allowed to draw the soul toward God.
The Short Sharp Dart: Practice Instructions
The Cloud of Unknowing is unusually practical for a mystical text. The author does not remain at the level of principle but provides specific guidance for dealing with the most common problem in contemplative prayer: the intrusion of thoughts.
His recommended technique is what he calls the "short, sharp dart": a single word, preferably monosyllabic, used as a focused point of intention when thoughts arise and threaten to carry the practitioner away. He suggests words like "God," "love," "sin," or any other word that has genuine resonance for the individual. The key qualities of this word are brevity and urgency: it should be as short and sharp as possible, like a dart thrown with full force.
Using the Short Sharp Dart
When you sit in contemplative prayer and thoughts arise (which they will, constantly, at first), do not engage the thought, analyze it, or try to push it away. Instead, return to your single word, using it as a focused point of naked intent directed toward God. The author says to imagine covering thoughts with a thick cloud of forgetting, not fighting them but simply not feeding them with attention. The word is not an object of meditation; it is an instrument. As soon as the thought passes, release the word again and return to simple naked silence directed toward God. Over time, the returns become quicker and the intervals of naked presence longer.
The author is also specific about posture and time. He recommends sitting rather than prostrate, in a position that is neither too comfortable (which invites sleep) nor too strained (which creates tension that interferes with recollection). He does not specify a length of time but implies sessions of significant duration. He also warns against specific false postures and behaviors (see below in the section on false contemplatives).
The simplicity of the technique is deliberate and reflects deep understanding of how the mind works. Many contemplative methods involve complex visualizations, careful body postures, or elaborate sequences of mental acts. The Cloud reduces the practice to its absolute minimum: one word, returned to as often as needed, in service of a simple naked intent toward God. The simplicity is not poverty but precision.
Naked Being: The Book of Privy Counselling
The Book of Privy Counselling, the author's shorter companion work, is addressed to someone who has been working with the method of The Cloud for some time and needs guidance on moving deeper. It is notably more concentrated and stripped down than The Cloud, reflecting the simplification that occurs as the practice matures.
The author introduces a concept not fully developed in The Cloud: "naked being." Where The Cloud focused on the naked intent of love directed toward God, the Privy Counselling suggests a further simplification: the contemplative may find that even the directedness of the "naked intent" is more structure than the deepened practice requires. What remains when all content, all direction, and all specific intent is released is simply the awareness of being, of existing, of one's own "I am." And this bare awareness of existence, held in God, is itself the deepest form of contemplative prayer available in this life.
I Am as the Ground of Prayer
The author writes in the Privy Counselling: "Look that nothing remain in thy working mind but a naked intent stretching unto God, not clothed in any special thought of God, but only that thou art as thou art, and God as He is." This is a remarkable formulation. It suggests that the deepest contemplative prayer is not about God as an object but about the relationship of bare existence to divine being: "thou art as thou art, and He is as He is." The bare "I am" of the soul held in the bare "I AM" of God. This anticipates aspects of Meister Eckhart's teaching about the ground of the soul and the ground of God.
Warning: The Author's Critique of False Contemplatives
One of the most striking and practically valuable aspects of The Cloud of Unknowing is its sustained attention to the pathologies of contemplative life: the ways the genuine practice can be imitated, distorted, or corrupted by spiritual pride, sensory confusion, or misunderstanding.
The author describes several signs of false or disordered contemplative practice. Those who stare upward with frenzied eyes, seeking to see God with physical vision. Those who adopt unusual postures, loll their heads to one side, gape their mouths, or breathe in abnormal patterns. Those who feel unusual heats or sweats or see lights with the physical eyes. Those who weep excessively at specific thoughts or images as a sign of spiritual achievement. Those who become convinced that they are in an advanced spiritual state and begin to judge others from this supposed height.
The Author's Warning on Spiritual Pride
The author reserves his sharpest language for those who, having read descriptions of contemplative experience, proceed to imitate the outward signs without the inner reality. He is not denying that genuine contemplative experience may sometimes have outward effects, including tears, unusual warmth, or a sense of light. He is warning against producing these effects deliberately, as a sign of spiritual achievement, or claiming them as evidence of special closeness to God. The genuine contemplative is, outwardly, unremarkable: sitting quietly, breathing normally, showing no sign of anything unusual. The inner reality is invisible from outside.
The author's positive criterion for authentic contemplation is equally illuminating: the genuine contemplative is humble, charitable toward others, and lives with increasing simplicity and freedom from attachment. The fruits of authentic contemplative prayer are not spiritual experiences but moral and relational transformation: greater love of neighbor, deeper humility, and a growing freedom from the compulsive need for particular consolations or experiences.
Sources: Pseudo-Dionysius and Richard of St Victor
The Cloud of Unknowing did not arise in a vacuum. The author was deeply read in the Latin mystical and theological tradition, and two sources are particularly central: Pseudo-Dionysius and Richard of St Victor (c.1110-1173).
From Pseudo-Dionysius, the author took the fundamental apophatic framework: God transcends all affirmation and negation, all images and concepts, and the soul's deepest contact with God occurs in a divine darkness beyond all intellectual activity. The author translated Dionysius's Mystical Theology himself (Denis Hid Divinity), so he knew the text with unusual precision. He followed the interpretation of Thomas Gallus (c.1200-1246), a Victorine theologian who had read Dionysius through an affective rather than purely intellectual lens, emphasizing love (affectus) rather than intellect (intellectus) as the highest power by which God is approached.
From Richard of St Victor's Benjamin Minor (The Twelve Patriarchs), the author drew his account of the progressive stages of the inner life and the relationship between the faculties of the soul: imagination, reason, and the "understanding" that transcends both. Richard's analysis of the spiritual faculties was more psychologically developed than Dionysius's, and the Cloud author used it to provide a more specific account of what happens inside the soul during contemplative prayer.
What the Cloud Does With Its Sources
The Cloud's relationship to its sources is not mechanical. The author does not simply reproduce Dionysian apophatic theology or Victorine faculty psychology. He reframes them for a specific English audience in the 1370s: practical, vernacular, urgent, and deeply personal. Where Dionysius wrote in the elevated mode of late antique philosophical theology and Richard wrote with scholastic precision, the Cloud author writes as a teacher who cares about his particular student and wants to say exactly what that student needs to hear. The transformation of the sources into something new and distinctive is itself a mark of genuine mastery.
Modern Influence: Centering Prayer and Beyond
The Cloud of Unknowing enjoyed a quiet but persistent influence through the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, particularly among Carthusians and other contemplative religious. It was translated into Latin (possibly in the fifteenth century) and into various modern languages. William Johnston's 1973 modern English translation and introduction brought it to a wide popular audience for the first time.
Its most significant modern influence is through Centering Prayer. In the early 1970s, Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Meninger at St Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, were concerned that the rich heritage of Christian contemplative prayer was inaccessible to ordinary laypeople. They turned to The Cloud of Unknowing as the most practically detailed guide available and developed the Centering Prayer method from it. The sacred word in Centering Prayer is a direct adaptation of the Cloud's short sharp dart. The instruction to release all thoughts and return to the sacred word replicates the Cloud's method. The understanding of the practice as a consent to God's presence and action (rather than an attempt to produce an experience) reflects the Cloud's insistence that infused contemplation is a gift, not an achievement.
Thomas Merton, who had been a student at the monastery of Gethsemani under the Trappist tradition, read and recommended The Cloud repeatedly. In New Seeds of Contemplation (1961), he drew on its teaching about the transcendence of images and concepts in prayer. Merton was particularly drawn to the Cloud's non-possessive quality: the contemplative does not seek spiritual experiences or states to add to their collection but seeks only God, releasing all experience as it comes and goes. Bede Griffiths, the Benedictine monk who lived out his later years in India and wrote extensively on the meeting of Eastern and Western contemplative traditions, also found The Cloud a valuable reference point in his comparative work.
Steiner and The Cloud: Naked Will and Pure Thinking
At first glance, Rudolf Steiner's philosophical and spiritual scientific work might seem far removed from the anonymous fourteenth-century English mysticism of The Cloud of Unknowing. Steiner emphasized knowledge, imagination, inspiration, and intuition as stages of higher cognition; the Cloud's author emphasized love, darkness, and the deliberate suppression of all cognitive activity. But the apparent contrast resolves when one looks more carefully at what Steiner meant by "pure thinking" and what the Cloud's author meant by "naked love."
In The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), Steiner described pure thinking as a mode of cognitive activity that has freed itself from dependence on sense impressions and from the passive reception of ready-made concepts. Pure thinking is an act of the will as much as of the intellect: the soul actively generates its own conceptual content from within rather than merely responding to external stimuli. In its highest form, as spiritual intuition (the third stage of higher cognition described in Knowledge of Higher Worlds, GA 10), this pure thinking becomes a direct participation in the spiritual reality being known, without any mediating image or concept.
The Naked Intent and Pure Thinking
The Cloud's "naked intent" stripped of all images, concepts, and specific content bears a structural resemblance to Steiner's account of spiritual intuition as a knowing that does not represent its object from outside but participates in it from within. Both involve a radical clearing away of the ordinary mediating activity of the discursive mind. Both emphasize the will as the decisive faculty: the Cloud's naked will pressing through the cloud, Steiner's pure thinking as an act of spiritual will. Both describe a state that is not empty but maximally alive and receptive. The difference is primarily cultural and conceptual: the Cloud's author frames the experience in the language of Christian love and divine transcendence; Steiner frames comparable experiences in the language of spiritual cognition and the supersensible world.
Steiner discussed the Christian mystical tradition at various points in his work and was generally respectful of figures like Eckhart, Tauler, and the author of The Cloud, reading them as genuine spiritual perceivers who had authentic experiences of spiritual realities, even if their conceptual frameworks for interpreting those experiences were limited by the theological language available to them. The Cloud author's insistence on stripping away all theological content during the act of contemplation itself would have been, from a Steinerian perspective, both an expression of genuine spiritual instinct and a potential limitation: the highest spiritual knowledge, for Steiner, does not dissolve into contentless union but maintains a knowing quality even in the most intimate contact with spiritual beings.
This question, whether the highest spiritual experience is a knowing union with content or a loving union without content, is one of the deepest unresolved debates in the philosophy of mysticism. The Cloud's author and Rudolf Steiner represent two serious and well-grounded positions on either side of it. Reading them together, as complementary rather than contradictory, enriches both traditions.
The Cloud connects directly to the broader stream of contemplative prayer we have explored in this series, to the Dionysian apophatic tradition that is its primary source, and to the Eriugenan tradition in which God as Nothing anticipates the Cloud's divine darkness. All of these are expressions of the same deep impulse: the human soul's recognition that the divine ground is beyond all comprehension, and that the most honest and the most loving response to this recognition is to stop grasping and simply be there.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous (Penguin Classics)
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What is The Cloud of Unknowing?
The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English around 1375. It is structured as a letter from an experienced contemplative to a young disciple, guiding them in the practice of contemplative prayer. The central teaching is that God cannot be grasped by the intellect but can be touched by love: a naked, wordless intent of the will directed toward God alone. It is one of the most practically detailed and psychologically acute texts in the Christian mystical tradition.
What are the two clouds in The Cloud of Unknowing?
The author describes two clouds. The "cloud of unknowing" lies between the soul and God: the divine nature that no thought or concept can penetrate. The contemplative presses upward toward this cloud with naked intent of love. Below the soul lies the "cloud of forgetting": between the soul and all created things, including memories, thoughts, and even holy images. The contemplative presses all such things down under this second cloud so that no distraction interrupts the upward movement of love toward God.
What is the "short sharp dart" in The Cloud of Unknowing?
The "short sharp dart" is the author's recommended practice: a single short word (God, love, sin) used as a weapon against distraction. When thoughts arise, the practitioner does not engage them but returns to this word as a focused point of will. The word functions not as an object of meditation but as a sharp, focused point of naked intent. The shorter and simpler the word, the better: monosyllables are ideal.
Who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing?
The author is unknown. Internal evidence suggests a fourteenth-century English man, possibly a Carthusian monk or Augustinian canon, writing around 1375. He also wrote The Book of Privy Counselling, the Epistle of Prayer, Epistle of Discretion, and English translations of Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology (Denis Hid Divinity) and Richard of St Victor's Benjamin Minor. No attribution has won scholarly consensus.
How does The Cloud of Unknowing connect to Pseudo-Dionysius?
The Cloud is deeply indebted to the apophatic theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, particularly the Mystical Theology, which the Cloud author translated into English as Denis Hid Divinity. The Cloud's "cloud of unknowing" is essentially the Dionysian divine darkness translated into a practical guide for English contemplatives. The key difference is the Cloud author's affective interpretation: where Dionysius emphasized intellectual negation, the Cloud emphasizes the primacy of love over intellect.
Is The Cloud of Unknowing related to Centering Prayer?
Yes. Centering Prayer, developed in the 1970s by Trappist monks Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Meninger, was explicitly inspired by The Cloud of Unknowing. The sacred word used in Centering Prayer is a direct adaptation of the Cloud's short sharp dart. The structure of Centering Prayer, resting in silent presence and gently releasing all thoughts, replicates the Cloud's method of pressing thoughts under the cloud of forgetting while the naked intent of love presses upward toward God.
What does "naked intent" mean in The Cloud of Unknowing?
In The Cloud of Unknowing, "naked intent" refers to a movement of the will toward God stripped of all content: no images, no concepts, no specific requests, no feelings, no awareness of oneself as the one loving. It is "naked" because it is uncovered, not clothed in any particular form. It is "blind" because it reaches toward God through the cloud of unknowing without cognitive grasp. The author insists this is the highest form of prayer, more pleasing to God than any specific verbal or imaginative prayer.
What is The Book of Privy Counselling?
The Book of Privy Counselling is a shorter companion work by the same anonymous author, written for someone who had been working with The Cloud for some time. It introduces the concept of "naked being": the further simplification of contemplative practice to a direct awareness of one's own existence as held in God's being, without any intermediate content. It is generally considered more mature and concentrated than The Cloud.
What did Thomas Merton say about The Cloud of Unknowing?
Thomas Merton considered The Cloud of Unknowing one of the most important texts in the Christian mystical tradition. In New Seeds of Contemplation and other works, he drew on its teaching about the transcendence of concepts and images in prayer. He saw the Cloud's apophatic approach as particularly relevant for modern people who are intellectually sophisticated but spiritually blocked by their own conceptual activity.
How should a beginner approach The Cloud of Unknowing?
The author himself advises that the text is not for everyone and addresses it to someone already formed by active Christian life. For beginners, reading the text as spiritual instruction rather than immediate practical guidance is recommended. The best approach is to read it alongside a contemporary presentation such as Thomas Keating's Open Mind, Open Heart, which translates the Cloud's method into accessible modern practice, and to approach it within a grounded spiritual community or with guidance from an experienced spiritual director.
What is apophatic theology and how does it relate to The Cloud?
Apophatic theology (or via negativa) is the approach to speaking about God that proceeds by negation: instead of saying what God is, it says what God is not. Rooted in Pseudo-Dionysius, it runs through the Christian mystical tradition as a corrective to reducing God to a concept. The Cloud of Unknowing applies apophatic theology practically: since God cannot be grasped by any concept or image, genuine prayer must move beyond concepts and images. The cloud of unknowing is the practical application of apophatic theology to interior life.
What is the 'short sharp dart' in The Cloud of Unknowing?
The 'short sharp dart' is the author's recommended practice technique: a single short word (the author suggests 'God' or 'love' or 'sin' as examples) used as a weapon against distraction. When thoughts arise and disturb the contemplative's naked intent toward God, the practitioner does not engage or analyze the thought but simply returns to the sharp, focused use of this word. The word functions not as an object of meditation but as a point of concentrated will, a dart shot upward through the cloud of unknowing. The shorter and simpler the word, the better: monosyllables are ideal.
What does 'naked intent' mean in The Cloud of Unknowing?
In The Cloud of Unknowing, 'naked intent' (sometimes translated as 'naked love' or 'blind intent') refers to a movement of the will toward God that is stripped of all content: no images, no concepts, no specific requests, no feelings, and no sense of one's own spiritual state. It is 'naked' because it is uncovered, not clothed in any particular form. It is 'blind' because it does not see God clearly but reaches toward God through the cloud of unknowing without cognitive grasp. The author insists this is the highest and most direct form of prayer, more pleasing to God than any specific verbal or imaginative prayer.
The Darkness That Is Fullness
The Cloud of Unknowing asks something genuinely difficult: to sit in silence with nothing, to stop filling the space with holy thoughts, to release the very seeking that brought you to prayer, and to rest in a darkness that the author insists is not empty but full. Most readers find that the first attempt produces only restlessness. The second, more restlessness. But somewhere in the practice, the author's central claim begins to be tested: that by love, not by thought, God may be gotten and holden. The cloud is not a wall. It is a threshold.
Sources & References
- Anonymous. (c.1375). The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling. Edited by P. Hodgson. EETS, 1944.
- Johnston, W. (Trans. and Ed.). (1973). The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling. Doubleday. [Standard modern edition]
- Turner, D. (1995). The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. Cambridge University Press.
- Gallus, T. (c.1240). Commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology. See: Harkins, F. T. (Ed.). (2017). Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. Baker Academic.
- Richard of St Victor. (c.1153). Benjamin Minor. In The Twelve Patriarchs. Translated by G. Zinn. Paulist Press, 1979.
- Keating, T. (1986). Open Mind, Open Heart. Continuum.
- Merton, T. (1961). New Seeds of Contemplation. New Directions.
- Steiner, R. (1904/1909). Knowledge of Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (GA 10). Anthroposophic Press, 1947.