The Unitive Phase of Training is dedicated to the study and application of Theology.

We don't use the term theology in its modern usage. Our theology is not merely a template of dogmas. When we say theology it carries something comparable to saying anthropology.

Theology has one primary aim, and three parts.
The primary aim, which is the primary aim of the entire Quaternary training system, is Theosis.
The three parts are, Initiation, Meditation and Theurgy.

We begin the Unitive Phase of training with an initiation that is designed to empower the student to internalize, and utilize the study and application of Theology.
It is in the Unitive Phase of training that the two pillars of Initiation and Revelation make their most direct appearance.
Though Initiation and Revelation are Quaternary components that pervade all three training phases, it is in the Unitive Phase of training that we gain our deepest understanding of them.
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.
As the anthropologist goes to the land of the people he studies and gets to know them personally. We, as theologists, go to the land of our one true love and get to know that One personally, and ultimately attain an anagogic union with that One.
So, it is through this Quaternary, this fourfold process of passing from Faith to Hope, then rising to Love of and ultimately union with the One, we attain that place that Nature has set as our proper station.

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.

Written by James McKinnon