The fourth element is Theology. Theology is the study of God and has three parts, meditation, initiation and theurgy. Through meditaton we come face to face with our own divine nature. Through Initiation we come to be reborn as our divine selves like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Through theurgy we come to understand the celestial hierarchy and our divine parent, the One.

The Ancient Order of the Culdees of Iona does not attempt to restrict its members to the lessons of its own teachers but in the spirit of Pythagoras, Jesus and Apollonius, who sought out Wisdom from many cultures and traditions, it encourages its students to be true "Lovers of Wisdom" and seek out useful practices wherever they can be found.

The Ancient Order of the Culdees of Iona does not teach that it is the only true church or path. Celtic Pythagoreans believe that the One, or God, has inspired many useful traditions for different people in different cultures and various states of development. We feel that our tradition, with its western origins and dedicated study of Nature through the sciences, is especially well suited to our modern technological society.

In antiquity many people might have been puzzled when Pythagoras taught that the foundation of manifest reality is symbolic number produced from a universal consciousness, but now computer scientists and quantum physicists are saying very similar things. In fact, virtually anyone who has seen the popular movie The Matrix could follow Pythagoras' meaning.

The Ancient Order of the Culdees of Iona is one tradition among many, but ours is a tradition whose time has arrived. It holistically combines music and math, poetry and ethics, analysis and meditation so that somewhere on the fingerboard between a Celtic Bard and a Greek Logician we will find the Beautiful, the Good, the One.

The Ancient Order of the Culdees of Iona also promotes living in accordance with a set of precepts attributed to Pythagoras called the Golden Verses of Pythagoras.

Written by James McKinnon