I find fascinating the way John Michell (in Dimensions of Paradise) can describe, quite convincely (to me, anyway), how certain ancient texts conceal specific geometry problems. Plato had a sign over his Academy, didn't he, saying no one could enter who wasn't a geometer? I can imagine him assigning some of his texts (2500 yrs ago) as sort of riddles or puzzles to be worked out somewhat like Michell does. He compares, for example, Plato's two ideal cities - Atlantis and Magnesia, and shows how the former is a kind of imperfect shadow - geometrically speaking - of the latter; and that Plato meant this as a kind of emblem (or causal explanation, even) for Atlantis's corruption & eventual fall.

Michell portrays a kind of ideal Platonic-Pythagorean canon of symbolic (and actual geometric) numbers, rooted in nature and reflecting its dynamics and harmonies, and has the visionary panache to suggest that world culture needs to return, somehow, to the order symbolized this way. If he is, on some level, right - then it's possible to imagine that we are today, in a sense, living in a distorted, disharmonious Atlantis-world : and that the eccentric search for "sunken", "lost" Atlantis is a kind of search for our own lost Paradise of peace & harmony...

Some of his investigations are nothing short of astonishing. See, for example, the way he analyzes in great detail some passages in the Gospel of John, & shows how they are, again (by way of gematria), symbolic geometry problems & designs... if indeed there is something to this (which I'm sure mainstream scholarship keeps at arm's length - several cubits, anyway) the implications are mind-boggling...