Why the ancients?

You can study the ancients, you can learn every fact
You can follow the cycles that leave and come back
                                                                Bob Seger

I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
                                                               Toto


I picked up Hugh Nibley's (and Michael Rhodes's) One Eternal Round.  The whole fascination with the Ancient Egyptians arose within me from my childhood - my personal manifestation of the strange obsession the West has had with them since at least the Romantic Movement.  Why the ancients?  Why study dead languages?   Why pour over musty manuscripts from long millennia ago?  Why the related romantic turn to the middle ages and the volkerwanderung that lies before it?  (The genre of fantasy is the mask it wears today).

There aren't too many who hold on these days to Magick and the thought that the ancients knew something more than we did.  But I think we Moderns are still driven (haunted) by the thought that we threw a baby out with that bathwater when we launched ourselves into this brave new world.  If I had to venture a guess, I'd say we are looking for Spirit.