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The King’s Highway is alluded to in the Book of Genesis (Chapter 14), which recounts how an alliance of four kings (Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim) marched along the highway toward the Valley of Siddim from the north to do battle against another alliance of five kings (Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela).

Changes to The Cloud of Unknowing Page

[Addition to the History Section] Concerning the placement of The Cloud of Unknowing in the trends of the Roman Catholic Church at the approximate time of its writing, the work joins a broader medieval movement within Christianity toward a religious experience of a more individual and passionate view of relationship with God.

[Fixed a comma in the History section.]

[Additions to History]

Experience, in keeping with the mystical tradition, is considered the ultimate means by which a Christian can and should relate to God, and the practice of contemplation in The Cloud is thus focused on the experience of God by the contemplative. This relationship between God and the contemplative takes place within continual conflict between the spirit and the physical. God is spirit in the purest sense; therefore, no matter intensity of desire or fervor of love, the movement toward God by body-bound contemplatives will ever be halted by the cloud of unknowing that hides God from understanding and prevent fullest and truest experience of God's being. The object of the contemplative experience is to know God, as much as possible, from within this cloud of unknowing.

[Additions to Contents]

The Cloud of Unknowing is written specifically to a student, and the author strongly commands the student in the Prologue, "do not willingly and deliberately read it, copy it, speak of it, or allow it to be read, copied, or spoken of, by anyone or to anyone, except by or to a person who, in your opinion, has undertaken truly and without reservation to be a perfect follower of Christ."

[Modified an article in the original first paragraph of Contents section to flow from my new addition. Also modified the first quote to be from a different translation that is more consistent with the article, added more to the quote to reflect the contents of the introduction to it, and added a citation.]

"For the first time you [lift your heart to God with stirrings of love], you will find only a darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing [...] Whatever you do, this darkness and the cloud are between you and your God, and hold you back from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason and from experiencing him in the sweetness of love in your feelings. [...] And so prepare to remain in this darkness as long as you can, always begging for him you love; for if you are ever to feel or see him...it must always be in this cloud and this darkness."

As one pursues the beating of the cloud of unknowing as compelled by spiritual stirrings of love in the heart, the intellect and sinful stirrings will often pull the contemplatives focus away from God and back to the things of physical world and of the self. The author thus enjoins the contemplative to "vigorously trample on [any new thoughts or sinful stirrings] with a fervent stirring of love, and tread them down beneath your feet. And try to cover them with a thick cloud of forgetting, as if they had never been done by you or anyone else on earth. [...] Push them down as often as they rise."

The author draws a strong distinction in Chapters 16-22 between the active and contemplative Christian life. He illustrates the distinction by drawing heavily from the account of Mary and Martha in the Gospel of Luke, writing that "[By] Mary all contemplatives are understood, so that they should model their way of life on hers; and similarly by Martha, all actives, with the same consequent resemblance." While the author holds Mary as the superior example in the passage as a "model for all of us [who seek to be contemplatives]," he clarifies that Martha's activity in service to God was nonetheless "good and beneficial for her salvation" but not the best thing.

While the author presents many methods of his own for effective contemplation of God, he often leaves the teaching of method to God himself. In Chapter 40, for example, he advises a contemplative who is struggling with sin to "[...] feel sin as a lump, you do not know what, but nothing other than yourself. And then shout continuously in spirit, 'Sin, sin, sin! out, out, out!' This spiritual shout is better learned from God by experience than from from any human being by word."

While the practice of contemplation in The Cloud is focused upon the experience of spiritual reality by the soul, the author also makes some provision for the needs of the body, going so far as to say that care for the body is an important element of spiritual contemplation if only to prevent hindrance of its practice. He writes in Chapter 41: "And so, for the love of God, guard against sickness as much as you reasonably can, so that, as far as you may, you are not the cause of your own weakness. For I tell you that this work demands the greatest tranquility, and a state of health and purity in body as much as in soul. And so, for the love of God, regulate your conduct with moderation in body and in soul, and keep yourself as healthy as possible."