The Cloud of Unknowing (Middle English: The Cloude of Unknowyng) is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer in the late Middle Ages. The book counsels a young student to seek God, not through knowledge and intellection (faculty of the human mind), but through intense contemplation, motivated by love, and stripped of all thought. This is brought about by putting all thoughts and desires under a cloud of forgetting, and thereby piercing God's cloud of unknowing with a dart of longing love from the heart. This form of contemplation is not directed by the intellect, but involves spiritual union with God through the heart.
