Today, the sixth of August, the Christian calendar sets apart the Mystery of the Transfiguration; the luminous moment on Mount Tabor when Christ is revealed as uncontainable radiance. The scene unfolds with gravitas; it is when the veil between worlds becomes diaphanous, shimmering with the interplay of Law and Prophecy, shadow and Word. The narrative, present in the Synoptic Gospels, has drawn the contemplation of mystics and theologians alike, from the Cappadocian Fathers to the anonymous English anchorites who wrote of the Cloud of Unknowing. There, upon the mountain, Christ is transfigured before Peter, James, and John; His face shines, His raiment glistens and, from the luminous cloud, a Voice declares Him the Beloved. Moses and Elijah converse with Him, witnesses from the Law and the Prophets; nevertheless, the most arresting is the cloud itself, descending, enfolding, and speaking. The Transfiguration reveals the paradox at the heart of revelation: light so pure it veils itself, a presence that conceals in order to give.
I. The Luminous Cloud: Veil and Revelation
In the biblical imagination, the cloud is the primordial Divine presence, where vision yields to Mystery. On Sinai, it was a cloud thick with thunder, protecting Moses from the unsustainable proximity of Glory. In the desert, it guided by day, a silent pillar moving before Israel, its meaning never disclosed in full. In the tent of meeting, the cloud rested, filling the sanctuary, sanctifying it with a presence that could be neither seen nor grasped. During the Transfiguration, it descends, enveloping the disciples, drawing them into the very heart of unknowing. Within its folds, the Voice speaks through a luminous obscurity that reveals and hides in equal measure. Pondering the mysteries of Exodus, Gregory of Nyssa spoke of the “luminous darkness” where God is found only when sight gives way to interior hearing. The cloud functions as shelter and frontier, the place where the Divine can touch the world without annihilating it. The logic is Marian: the overshadowing of the Virgin by the Spirit, the presence hidden in the womb, the fiat uttered in silence. The cloud consecrates body and flesh as altar, rendering it translucent to the Light that passes through.
II. The Cloud of Unknowing: Cartusian and Hermetic Resonance
Centuries after the mountain vision, an English Carthusian penned The Cloud of Unknowing, a treatise of apophatic contemplation. It counsels the soul to set aside all images and concepts, advancing not with knowledge but with love, crossing the limen of the intellect into the shadowed presence of God. “For He may well be loved, but not thought; by love may He be gotten and held, but by thought never.” In this mystical tradition, the cloud is Holy surrender: a renunciation of the impulse to grasp, a preparation to be grasped. The same logic pervades the Gospel narrative; when the disciples are enveloped, they lose sight, but gain hearing. They descend the mountain changed, marked by encounter instead of understanding. The divine does not demand intellectual mastery; it asks for availability, for a conduit attuned to what exceeds certainty. In this sense, the Transfiguration prefigures any authentic mystical encounter: the light that blinds, the word that silences, the shadow that holds more truth than exposure. The cloud is the form that the formless assumes, the guarantee that the Absolute can approach without consuming. Within it, the Logos finds passage; through it, the Word becomes audible.
Coda – A Lunar Contemplation of the Transfiguration
With the Moon now rigid in Capricorn beneath Saturnian eyes, the remembrance of Transfiguration settles in the marrow; Mercury is listening and Raphael breathes through the silence. At dusk, veil a mirror with dark cloth, set high. Place a piece of myrrh or frankincense on burning charcoal beside it; let the incense rise as a cloud. Inhale gently, invoking Raphael in thought alone.
Contemplate the cloaked mirror and the Mystery of Christ’s light shining through flesh, hidden now within the cloud. Remain in stillness until the incense is spent. Allow Raphael, the Archangel of green fire and nocturnal crossings, open the secret river within the night; may his Hermetic caduceus stir the vapours of healing through the lunar veil, sealing wounds invisible, guiding the soul where vision surrenders to listening, and the trace of transfigured Light roots itself within the depths of the watcher.
Beneath the shadowed Moon, allow the Mystery of transfiguration settle as blessing, luminous and unknown, within the waiting heart. When the hour comes, and the Lunar Luminary leaves Capricorn to reach its full reflected light in Aquarius, uncover the mirror in silence, carrying the memory of transfigured light veiled within oneself.
Fiat Lux.