Charles Williams points out that English mystic classic The Cloud of Unknowing is “all but impossible to read”. Why? It’s not just that it’s confusing. Or that it’s written in Middle English. It practically begins with a curse, forbidding you from reading it!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
I charge thee and I beseech thee, with as much power and virtue as the bond of charity is sufficient to suffer, whatsoever thou be that this book shalt have in possession, whether by property, or by keeping, or by bearing as a messenger, or else by borrowing, the inasmuch as in thee is by will and advisement, though neither read it, write it, nor speak it, nor yet suffer it to be read, written, or spoken, by any other or to any other, unless it be by such a one or to such a one as hath (in thy supposing) in a true will and by a whole intent purposed him to be a perfect follower of Christ. And that not only in active living, but also in the sovereignest point of contemplative living the which is possible by grace to be come to in this present life by a perfect soul yet abiding in this deadly body.
-The Cloud of Unknowning, Prologue