The Cloud of Unknowing draws on the mystical tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Christian Neoplatonism, which focuses on the via negativa road to discovering God as a pure entity, beyond any capacity of mental conception and so without any definitive image or form. This tradition has reputedly inspired generations of mystical searchers from John Scotus Erigena, Nicholas of Cusa, and John of the Cross, to Teilhard de Chardin (the latter two of whom may have been influenced by The Cloud itself). Prior to this, the theme of The Cloud had been in the Confessions of St. Augustine (IX, 10) written in AD 398.