Bill Nacopoulos
The objective of this research paper is to provide an overview of the mysterious SATOR ROTAS SQUARE as it is commonly known.
Our goals will consist of:
- Origins and discovery from oldest to later finds
- Description of this artifact-details explained / Translation
- Various theories as to meaning and reasoning behind its creation
- Gestalt application to our research group as it connects to other gathered topics and the Craft
In the year 1936 during excavations in the ruins of Pompeii, Italian Archaeologist Matteo Della Corte discovered this curious object inscribed onto a column. He recognized what it was immediately having discovered a similar etching, but in fragmented form over ten years earlier in 1925 at another site in Pompeii. Many other Sator squares have subsequently been found throughout the Roman world from The UK to Syria.
The Sator Square is a 5 X 5 grid containing 5 five-letter words, totaling twenty-five characters. The words are in Latin with eight different letters (five consonants and three vowels (S,T,R,P,N ) ( A,E,O ) consider the illustration given for this article.
As one can observe, the letters form words across each row can be read up, down , left to right, and right to left creating a palindrome.
Let us consider firstly what the words translate to from Latin to English.
SATOR means Sower, planter, begetter, or procreator.
The word AREPO appears nowhere else in Latin Literature. It is a hapax legomenon. Thus, many scholars have indicated this to be a name of a specific person: Arepo. We will look further into this word later as it has produced much speculation.
TENENT means to hold, comprehend, masters, sustains, keeps.
OPERA means care, effort, attention, with pain and labor, or service.
ROTAS means wheels.
The most direct translation of these words together would mean “The Sower/ farmer Arepo holds the wheels with great care.” Another could be “Arepo the farmer guides the wheel with skill.”
As the Sator Square being found all over the world including across Europe-Asia Minor and North Africa, it would seem at first glance that our farmer friend Arepo was indeed quite a prolific grower. The Encyclopedia Britannica has called the Sator Square “the most familiar lettered square in the Western world.”
Some Academics believe that the Square was a puzzle meant to occupy time for people looking at it, and pondering if they can solve it or perhaps as an amusement like a modern crossword or word game.
As this paper will examine, this origin explanation fails to show how this word puzzle became such a powerful religious and magical medieval symbol and familiar to the craft of Masonry.
One can do a very exhaustive and detailed study on all the various finds of this square around the world and of different eras of time. Long after the public had forgotten about classical word puzzles, the Sator Square was used long into the Middle Ages and beyond as a magical charm against Illness-bad luck-and general evil.
Some of the most widespread uses of the Sator Square during this time was as a “fire extinguisher” in which the five words were inscribed onto disks and then hurled onto fires to quell it.
Here are more examples as briefly cited from a twelfth century Latin medical book called the TROTULA:
As a cure for dog bites, rabies, fever, toothaches, jaundice, and even insanity. This is a long way from Arepo the farmer and a word game. However, to fully understand the high regard in which common people, as well as alchemists, esoteric scholars and the Christian community held the Sator Square, we must go back to the words themselves and reexamine the meanings as some more adventurous thinkers have done.
By reexamining the meanings, one can find a whole host of other possibilities of meaning and reason for the creation of this Palindrome. Some of which may include:
- Pythagorean or Stoic puzzle
- Christian Paternoster
- Gnostic, or Orphic Amulet
- Knights Templar Magic Square
- Mithraic or Jewish Numerology Charm
Turning back to the original words of the Sator Square, one can examine each and delve into their deeper or various meanings.
Sator or Sower or planter can also be translated as progenitor in the sense of seeding life or father from the root word serere/satus meaning to sow. There is another word however that derives its root meaning from serere / satus: Saturn the Roman God /Greek equivalent Kronos of the harvest and time.
Farmers needed to have a good understanding of time and the growing seasons. Of the seven ancient known planets, Saturn was number seven, and took the longest to make its orbit. Saturn was also the father of the Olympian Gods.
Arepo does not appear in any known Latin texts, thus is assumed to be a man’s name. However, some have figured this to be a combination of names such as Serapis. This is a Greek form of the Egyptian Gods Osiris, and Apis forming Serapis or Asar-Hapi-Harapis. These Gods forms were also associates with death, resurrection, and time.
In The Diegesis (pg. 204), Robert Taylor quotes from Socrat. Eccl Hist. lib. 5. c. 17. as follows:
“In the temple of Serapis, now overthrown and rifled throughout, there were found engraven in the stones certain letters which they call hieroglyphical; the manner of their engraving resembled the form of the cross. The which, when both Christians and Ethnics beheld before them, every one applied them to his proper religion.
The Christians affirmed that the Cross was a sign or token of the passion of Christ [see: Passion of Osiris], and the proper symbol of their profession. The Ethnics avouched that therein was contained something in common, belonging as well to Serapis as to Christ; and that the sign of the cross signified one thing unto the Ethnics, and another to the Christians.
While they contended thus about the meaning of these hieroglyphical letters, many of the Ethnics became Christians, for they perceived at length the sense and meaning of those letters, and that they prognosticated salvation and ‘life to come’.” 5
Tenent is very exact in its translation being to say “to hold in an expert way”. This denotes literally “he she or it holds” from the verb tenere. More modern usage includes the notion of a principle or belief held by a person or group.
Opera derives from the word operari which means “to work with care or to work with care and effort.”
Rotas means “wheels, revolutions, rotations, turning, a circle of items “.
Taking all this into account, one could also retranslate the words to mean “The Father /God/Saturn Serapis / of time holds onto the wheels (Zodiac) and operates it with great care.”
Could this be the secret to this mysterious square? This may further explain why there is always religious connotations to this with many, if not all, claiming it as their own.
Many different attempts to rearrange the letters over the centuries have given to many different interpretations and “hidden “secrets are revealed based on the observer. As mentioned earlier, the Sator Square has also been given several other titles.
By arranging the letters and seeing the God “Aeon” (associated with Saturn) we get what is called the “Templar Square”. Consider here an image which reflects the connection forming the familiar cross of the Templar Order:
Early Christians rearranged the lettering and saw the Paternoster:
The Key of Solomon, which represents the five words as a pentacle, are shown here:
It could be that one can now apply this from a grouping of various patterns to the gestalt of how one may apply to the craft of free masonry.
The assertation that the Sator Square may have been used by the earliest brothers of the craft, or that it moved from operative masons to speculative masons may not be improbable or farfetched. It should be noted that many of the squares were found carved upon many buildings erected during the Middle Ages, thus there may be a continuous connection from earliest times through to modern Freemasonry.
That the craft uses hidden meanings in various manners was observed by Manly P. Hall:
“Ciphers are hidden in the most subtle manner: they may be concealed within the watermark of a piece of paper upon which a book is printed ; they may be bound into the covers of ancient books ; they may be hidden under imperfect pagination ; they may be extracted from the first letters of words or the first words of sentences ; they may be concealed in mathematical equations or in apparently unintelligible figures..”6
There is something in the craft called the “Freemasons magic square” which utilizes an array of an equal number of rows and columns containing numbers which are arranged so that the sum of any column is equal to the sum of that row. The interesting aspect of magic squares is that they may be built with letters as opposed to numbers and in that aspect the letters of any language.
If we are to apply the gestalt method to these findings, we can form an understanding which would have the weight of scholarship behind it.
First, the Sator Square is ancient and may predate the Roman world but was incorporated into their religious mysteries and used as a talisman originally by the initiated and then to a lesser extent as a word puzzle to the common man as a symbol much as barbers pole symbolizes to us now where we may obtain a haircut without having to specifically state so.
Next, that the Sator Square survived through the centuries as important and having a hidden meaning that it is trying to convey. To the learned, a way to understand time and the universe so much so that it was understood to contain magical properties and used as such.
Next, that it was found in all parts of the world and specifically in building projects by which operative masons had a knowledge of it and displayed it in various structures.
Finally, that the craft also uses Palindromes and cyphers to convey knowledge and light.
The author personally has much more to learn as regarding the craft. The goal of this paper is to convey that this can help brothers understand more about this mysterious find and how it can be used easily by Masons.
The interpretations and meanings of the words that we have gone over speak of many things.
They speak of a progenitor or heavenly father that we can easily understand as the Grand Architect which sows knowledge which all Masons are in search of especially in allegorical form.
They speak of an architect that dispenses knowledge in a hidden manner that only worthy and duly and truly prepared can understand. The Architect is telling us that is is He that is in control of the wheels of fortune or time, which is something that all Masons understand in so far as the aspect of the circle of life death and the afterlife.
They speak of the Sator Square as a hidden teaching tool can convey great spiritual truths which, it is the author’s opinion, is exactly what Freemasonry is all about. That those individual Masons must find these lessons in order to build their own temple.
The technique of using this type of messaging to convey a message would therefore not be uncommon in Masonry.
Thus concludes this overview of the Sator Square which hopefully has inspired some to dig further into it. I do believe that our craft has roots with it and look forward in doing further research.
References and Citations
Sheldon, Mary Rose. (2003). The Sator Rebus: An Unsolved Cryptogram. Academia.edu.
https://www.academia.edu/8270114/THE_SATOR_REBUS_AN_UNSOLVED_CRYPTOGRAM
Benefiel, Rebecca. (2012). Magic Squares, Alphabet Jumbles, Riddles and more: The culture of word-games among the graffiti of Pompeii”. Academia edu, 65-80.
https://www.academia.edu/5111444/_Magic_Squares_Alphabet_Jumbles_Riddles_and_more_The_culture_of_word_games_among_the_graffiti_of_Pompeii_in_The_Muse_at_Play_Riddles_and_Wordplay_in_Greek_and_Latin_Poetry_eds_J_Kwapisz_D_Petrain_and_M_Szymanski_Munich_De_Gruyter_2012_65_80
Hemer, Colin J. (1978). The Manchester Rotas-Sator Square. Biblicalstudies.org.uk, 1-5.
https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ft/rotas_hemer.pdf
Swire, Ellie. (2019). Sator Squares. Magdlibs.com.
https://magdlibs.com/2019/11/19/sator-squares/
Fishwick, Duncan. (2011). On the Origin of the Rotas-Sator Square. Harvard Theological Review, Volume 57, Issue 1, pp. 39-53.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/abs/on-the-origin-of-the-rotassator-square1/A81C6B98A6C8352FED7BC5ADDF945AA9
Hall, Manly P. (1928). The Secret Teachings of All Ages. H.S Croker and Co.
