Paula Marvelly: Cloud of Unknowing

In 1390, the first complete edition of the Bible was translated into vernacular Middle English by the Lollards. More importantly one could argue, the anonymous fourteenth-century classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, would provide one of the most beautiful expositions of the nature of the mystical life.

Separated by a ‘cloud of unknowing’ from God, the individual can taste divine love through the use of a single-word prayer, rather like a mantra, eradicating all extraneous thought:

'Take thee but a little word of one syllable: for so it is better than of two, for ever the shorter it is the better it accordeth with the work of the Spirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this word LOVE . . . And fasten this word to thine heart, so that it never go thence for thing that befalleth.

'This word shall be thy shield and thy spear, whether thou ridest on peace or on war. With this word, thou shalt beat on this cloud and this darkness above thee. With this word, thou shalt smite down all manner of thought under the cloud of forgetting.'

Extract from Women of Wisdom: The Journey of the Sacred Feminine through the Ages by Paula Marvelly