  The most controversial and arcane passages of the Mystical Theology revolve around the mystical as taken in itself and not as the act of negating the other forms of theology. Dionysius says that after all speaking, reading, and comprehending of the names ceases, there follows a divine silence, darkness, and unknowing. All three of these characteristics seem privative, as though they were simply being the absence of speech, sight, and knowledge respectively. But Dionysius does not treat them as privative. Instead, he uses temporal and spatial language to mark off a special place and time for them. Using as his example the account of Moses’ ascent up Mount Sinai in the Hebrew scriptures, Dionysius says that after Moses ascends through the sensible and intelligible contemplation of God, he then enters the darkness above the mountain’s peak. The darkness is located above the mountain, and Moses enters it after his contemplation of God in the various forms of theology. Dionysius leaves the relation between Moses and the darkness highly obscure. Some commentators reduce it to a form of knowing, albeit an extraordinary form of knowing. Others reduce it to a form of affective experience, in which Moses feels something that he can never know or explain in words. Dionysius himself does not give decisive evidence in favor of either interpretive move. He speaks only of Moses’ “union” with the ineffable, invisible, unknowable godhead.