The Magic of the SATOR Square
The SATOR square is an ancient arrangement of five, five-letter Latin words. It is a two-dimensional palindrome, which means that it reads the same forwards/backwards and up/down. Examples of this inscription have turned up all over Europe on buildings and objects since at least the first century, and the prevailing wisdom is that this mysterious square functions as a protective amulet.
So what does it mean???
SATOR: sower; seeder; progenitor; creator
AREPO: (no one is really sure; most think it is a proper name, possibly of the subject of the sentence?)
TENET: (itself a palindrome) — a verb meaning to hold or keep
OPERA: work, labor, make an effort (like, “operate”)
ROTAS: wheels
Cross-Stitched SATOR Square, House of Good Fortune Collection
Translation: “The sower holds the wheels from the bank with effort.” Uh…OK…so what does that mean?
It seems that the meaning of the SATOR square is a metaphor that can be applied to both the agricultural and magical contexts.
According to Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Healing, Cosmology and Tradition in the Dutch Country, “The ‘sower’ is the farmer (or practitioner), who by means of effort, is able to render the cyclical ‘wheels’ of the cosmos useful for productive purposes, whether this is at the banks of a fertile river for the farmer or the heavenly divide in the celestial sphere for the healer.”
Before you take this interpretation to the bank, dear readers, know that the scholarship on this topic goes back hundreds of years and is far from settled.
There is even debate over whether the square should be read from left to right or from right to left. Alternate translations include:
“The Creator preserves his works.”
The sower Horus/Harpocrates checks toils and tortures.” (more on this, below)
The sower holds the plough, the works, the wheels.”
Drawing of magic square of letters with a cross in it, other letters in a cross shape, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
It’s worth taking a trip over to The Museum of Witchcraft of Magic to read their take on the SATOR Square, which includes an interesting linkage of SATOR to Jupiter.
Magic Square SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS incised on slate; from the collection of The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.
What’s Up With AREPO??
Some scholars take issue with the (non)translation of AREPO, and it does seem like kind of a cop-out, right? Positing that AREPO must have some meaning beyond a vague conception of the sentence’s subject, Miroslav Marcovich argued in a 1983 paper that it is actually a reference to the Egyptian God Horus, the master of magic, or Harpocrates, which he identifies as “an extremely popular god of good luck in the Graeco-Roman Egypt”. (But the House must point out that Harpocrates is more commonly identified as the god of silence and this explanation seems a little, well, convoluted.)
So where does this leave us in our quest to understand this magical symbol?
One of The House’s astute readers shared an alternate theory that is worthy of consideration. The reader posits that the seemingly nonsensical word AREPO is actually a blind. In other words, the letters AREPO have been rearranged to mask the message’s true meaning. Using this interpretation, the square would read as follows:
SATOR: seeder
AREPO = APERO: open (R and P are to be switched. APERO is the hidden idea. This is a blind.)
TENET: pillar
OPERA: work
ROTAS: cycles
Under this interpretation, it would read: “The seeder opens the pillars for the working of the cycles.”
Or: “The cycles work the pillars open to the seeder.”
The hidden message is that it is a confirmation of “God’s work” being performed in the location it is displayed. Also, the heavens are always open to the operations of the cycles. Also, the pillars, which hold the above and the below apart, are themselves the operations of the cycles.
In other words, it was not intended to be used as a protective device. It was an affirmation statement. (boom, mic drop)
(As an aside, The Bonheur Blog has the best readers and is grateful to receive contributions to this conversation. Please feel free to drop a comment if you have something to add.)
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Another Anagram…
Before we move on — there’s an additional layer of meaning to explore. Apparently, the letters of the SATOR square themselves can be rearranged to form an anagram reading PATER NOSTER A O (which is Latin for “Our Father… and then the letters, Alpha and Omega, i.e. the beginning and end).
And this is not the only explicitly Christian anagram that has been formed with these letters over the years. No, there are at least five others, including:
Oro te, pater, Oro te, pater, sanas. (“I pray thee Father, I pray thee Father, heal me.”)
O pater, ores pro aetate nostra. (“O Father, speak for our age.”)
Retro, Satana, toto apere osper. (“Back, Satan, open the whole party.”)
Satan, oro te pro arte, a te spero. (“Satan, I pray thee for art, I hope from thee.”)
Satan, ter oro te, opera praesto. (“Satan, I beseech thee thrice, work is available.”)
How to Use the SATOR Square
According to The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, which bills itself as the “ultimate reference book for the magical arts,” evil entities are reputedly unable to stay in a room with this magic square.
Simply write out the letters in the square formation on a piece of parchment with Dragon’s blood ink and post prominently in the space you wish to protect.
If you don’t have access to parchment paper and dragon’s blood ink, a brown paper bag and red ink will do. Or you can use red paper with gold ink. Or you can cross-stitch your own version as The House has done (see photo above). The SATOR Square can also be applied to objects, like this small jug, below.
Christopher Nolan’s Film, Tenet
As a final note to those who are taking a deep dive on the SATOR Square, The House recommends Tenet, a science fiction film written and directed by Christopher Nolan with a plot that is explicitly based on the SATOR Square. Piece of Mind explains:
“…[T]he entire movie is palindromic, in that time throughout is reflected as moving forward and backward simultaneously, as one giant time loop. Apparently, Nolan embedded references to the Sator Square — from the title (Tenet), to the main antagonist’s name (Sator), to Sator’s construction company (Rotas), to an artist (Arepo), to the setting (an opera house). Strikingly, the opening scene of the film just happens to take place in Kiev, Ukraine (though not filmed in Ukraine). The plot begins with an invasion of the Kiev Opera House, and the siege ends in an explosion.
The confounding plot of Nolan’s cinematic Sator Square is centered primarily around a time inversion device called the Algorithm. It is initially misconstrued by the lead antagonist, Sator (a Russian oligarch), as a nuclear weapon containing Plutonium 241 (circling back to the Pluto touchpoint). In actuality, Sator learns that the Algorithm is a weapon designed to reverse the entropy of the entire world (AKA global annihilation). Given that Sator was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, he wants to destroy the world in a kamikaze-esque move by activating the Algorithm. This is an oversimplification of a highly intricate film, deserving of deeper analysis (see here, here, and here).”
Magic Squares More Generally
As you contemplate the SATOR square, dear readers, you may want to explore the topic of magic squares more generally, which consist of a series of non-repeated numbers that equal the same sum when the rows and columns are totaled. One famous example of a magic square appears on the Passion facade of the famous and beautiful La Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona Spain — except it deviates from the magic formula in two important respects — (1) numbers are repeated/omitted and (2) the “magic constant,” which should be 34 in a 4 x 4 square summing the numbers 1-16, is off by one. So each line totals 33 instead of 34, and this “mistake” seems deliberate because:
Who died at age 33? Jesus Christ, King of the Jews.
And what does the number 3 signify in Christianity? — the Holy Trinity.
The official blog of La Sagrada Familia does an excellent job explaining the significance of the square and The House encourages you to read it.
“Magic Square” on the Passion facade at La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain