Walter Hilton (d. 24 March1396) was an English Augustinian mystic.

Little is known of his life. He was the head of a house of Augustinian Canons at Thurgarton, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire. He was closely in touch with the Carthusians, though not a member of that order.

His spiritual writings were widely influential during the fifteenth century in England. The most famous of these is the Scala Perfectionis, or Ladder of Perfection, in two books, first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494. This work may be described as a guide-book for the journey to the spiritual Jerusalem, which is "contemplation in perfect love of God". The soul is reformed to the image and likeness of God, first in faith only, and then in faith and in feeling. Speeded by humility and love, it passes through the mystical dark night, which "is nought else but a forbearing and a withdrawing of the thought and of the soul from earthly things by great desire and yearning for to love and see and feel Jesus and spiritual things". By the gift of love all the vices are destroyed, and the soul at length becomes a perfect lover of Jesus, "fully united to Him with softness of love". His presence is the life of the soul, even as the soul is the life of the body. Purified to know His secret voice, its spiritual eyes are opened to see His workings in all things and to behold His blessed nature. Hilton's mystical system is, in the main, a simplification of that of Richard of St. Victor, and, like Richard, he humbly disclaims any personal experience of the Divine familiarity which he describes, declaring that he has not the grace of contemplation himself "in feeling and in working, as I have it in talking".

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