02/12/2021
𝙏𝙊𝘿𝘼𝙔 𝙄𝙎 𝘼𝙉 8-𝘿𝙄𝙂𝙄𝙏 𝙋𝘼𝙇𝙄𝙉𝘿𝙍𝙊𝙈𝙀 𝘿𝘼𝙏𝙀: 12-02-2021
A palindrome is a word, verse, sentence, or a number that reads the same backward and forward. One of the most interesting palindrome and ingenious early 1st century Christian symbol is what is called The Sator Square or The Rotas Square.
When the five-letter Latin words are read in line order horizontally or vertically or backwards or forwards or bottom to top or top to bottom, they mean: “The sower, Arepo, holds or works the wheels with care.” Another translation is: “He who works the plow sows the seed.” The Sator Square is a combination of a palindrome where the words read the same backwards and forwards and, in this case, line by line either vertically or horizontally and a cryptogram where all the words are written in such a form or order that a key is required to understand the sense.
The 1st century Christians were a persecuted minority forced to identify themselves to each other by secret signs and actions, the most common of which were the primitive fish sign and the spilling of a little wine on the ground.
The obvious meaning of the Sator Square to a Christian would have been Jesus’ Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:3-9 when He likened the spreading of the word of the kingdom of God to a farmer who sows seeds. Christians were spiritual farmers spreading the seeds of the Evangel, the Good News. But hidden in the Sator Square is an anagram when positioned in the form of a cross. By rearranging the 25 letters, a new phrase, extremely beloved by Christians down through the ages, is formed:Paternoster
Paternoster 2Pater Noster (“Our Father”) is the Sator Stonebeginning of The Lord’s Prayer in Latin. The 25 letters arranged in this cross fashion say “Our Father” twice, vertically and horizontally, with two “A’s” and two “O’s” left over and placed as palindromes. “A” and “O” are the first and the last letters in the Greek alphabet and mean “Alpha, the Beginning” and “Omega, the End.” Jesus called Himself the First and the Last in Revelation 1:8: “I am the Alpha and Omega…who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” The Greek letter Tau (pronounced Taw) in the middle of the two palindromes simulates the cross of Christ (T) as does the arrangement of the Pater Noster letters. The interpretation of “ATO” and “OTA” would be: “Christ on the Cross, the Alpha and the Omega.”
To the uninitiated the Sator Square may seem confusing, obscure and recondite, but it has been understood and reproduced since shortly after Jesus’ resurrection. It was found at Herculaneum on a pillar of the west wall in a wrestling school and in Pompeii etched into the wall in the house of one Publius Paquius Proculus.
Sources:
(1) THE SATOR SQUARE—Early Church History (Retrieved on December 2, 2021);
(2) 📷Memento, Pinterest
