Also called ROTAS square, Sator-Rotas palindrome
A five-by-five Latin word square that reads the same in every direction, written on walls, plates and paper for nearly two thousand years against fire, illness and bewitchment.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Keep paper charms well clear of open flames and hot stove surfaces; fix them to a wall nearby rather than above the burner.
In 1936 a complete square was found scratched on a column of the Great Palaestra at Pompeii, which let Matteo Della Corte identify a fragment found in a house there years earlier. Both begin with ROTAS rather than SATOR, and both predate the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, making them the oldest known examples.
In early modern Germany the square was inscribed on wooden or metal disks that were thrown into a burning house to put out the fire. A 1743 ducal edict in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach required settlements to keep such disks ready, an official endorsement of a folk charm.
Hohman's handbook of charms, printed in Pennsylvania, gives the square against fire and bewitchment and for protecting cattle. It travelled with German settlers into Appalachia, where it was still used against fire and fits in the nineteenth century.
The square's meaning is still argued over. SATOR means sower, OPERA works, TENET holds and ROTAS wheels, while AREPO may be a proper name. Early scholars thought it a hidden Christian sign, because its letters can be rearranged into PATER NOSTER twice with a spare A and O. The Pompeii finds of the 1920s and 1936, and others at Dura-Europos in Syria from the early 1930s, pushed its date back far enough to make that reading controversial.
Whatever its origin, it became one of the most widely used charms in Europe. The twelfth-century medical collection known as the Trotula prescribed it in childbirth, and sixteenth-century writers such as Gerolamo Cardano recorded its use against fever and madness. It was carved at French castles against fire and copied into household charm books. A ROTAS square scratched on wall plaster was also found in 1868 at Roman Cirencester in England.
Written charms on red or yellow paper, or on peach wood, pasted at the door or carried, to keep harmful spirits out of a home in Chinese tradition.
An Icelandic magical stave of eight trident-tipped arms around a central point, drawn to make the bearer fearsome to enemies and shielded from harm.
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