The Sator Square

a word square - puzzle, magical, healing powers, religious?

Five years ago, I came across a curious thing called the Sator Square (or Rotas Square). It is a word square that contains a five-word Latin palindrome (words that read the same forward and backward).

R O T A S
O P E R A
T E N E T
A R E P O
S A T O R

S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S

The square appears in early and late medieval medical textbooks such as the Trotula, and was employed as a medieval cure for many ailments, particularly for dog bites and rabies, as well as for insanity, and relief during childbirth.

I learned of this odd little puzzle from a puzzling film. The words (though not the square itself) show up in Tenet, the 2020 action-thriller-spy-fi movie written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Nolan is known for puzzling us and leaving audiences with clues and things not fully explained.

The Sator Square gives the film its title. The location of the opening sequence is at the Kyiv Opera. Characters and companies in the film use other related words:
A. Sator is a villain, and Arepo is the Goya forger and there is a company called Rotas Security. What does it all mean? Nolan succeeded in getting me (and I’m sure others) to investigate the Sator Square.

The sator square's origin as a Latin puzzle became increasingly irrelevant as the symbol took on magical properties in European folklore. In the 12th century, it could be found in medical books.

The remaining letters – two each of A and O – are said to represent the concept of Alpha and Omega, which can be a reference in Christianity to the omnipresence of God.

The Coptic Christian Prayer of the Virgin in Bartos says that Christ was crucified with five nails, which were named Sator, Arepo, Tenet, Opera, and Rotas, and so the words entered the Ethiopic tradition as the names of the wounds of Christ. (In that Ethiopian tradition the words are altered to SADOR, ALADOR, DANAT, ADERA, and RODAS and they are prayed on the knots of the prayer rope.)

To further complicate the story, or to show how the Sator Square spread, in the time of Constantine VII (913–959), the shepherds of the Nativity story are called SATOR, AREPON, and TENETON. An even earlier Byzantine bible says that the baptismal names of the three Magi in the Nativity story are ATOR, SATOR, and PERATORAS. Still, another version has it that the Sator Square was Mithraic or Jewish in origin.

A Sator square excavated in Oppède, France. The lines read Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas, and the letters S and N are reversed as in an ambigram. (M Disdero/Creative Commons)