 If only God can bespeak Godself in literal terms, then we humans are graced with metaphors. What Cusanus provides in his metaphorical forays is not simply imaginative originality, but a series of metaphors designed to remind us that there is no proportion between creatures and creator; that indeed there is an asymmetry between them. Moreover, our best ways of conceiving and asserting this necessary lack of reciprocal dependence should be built into the metaphors we choose. This is why one may not need a theory of metaphor to do justice to the Cusan project of philosophical theology. Rather, the Cusan project is Neoplatonic and has its own traditional strictures on any metaphors he chooses: the ontology determines the metaphors, the metaphors do not determine the ontology. What makes Nicholas’ thought a Neoplatonism of his own is precisely the grasp his metaphors demonstrate of those ontological strictures, as well as the speculative imagination he evinces in the range, originality and variety of metaphors for what we can and cannot understand about God’s connection with creatures.