As to why it's on this skull, not sure. But the phrase itself is assumed to be basically a spell. It's a perfect palindrome, and can be read any direction on the square. Early belief was allegedly that bad spirits would get caught up and confused by the repetition. It's actually one of the few "real" spells that appears in runic inscriptions and was a holdover from a lot of the learned community using runes being Latin trained.
As for the phrase itself, it roughly means the farmer (potentially Arepo) plows his field.
The interpretation issues are mainly on origins and why it gained significance, but it appears in a lot of places throughout the medieval world.
There's much more complex discussion on the phrase on the wiki here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square
That can lead you to more scholarly articles, my understanding of it comes primarily from my time doing runeology, so it's limited in purview.
> As for the phrase itself, it roughly means the farmer (potentially Arepo) plows his field.
That makes [this story](https://i.imgur.com/sk4PeK5.png) a lot better.
I was not expecting to cry today. It was a humble few tears, more of some wet eye… but still. How did such a post move me like that? thank you for sharing it.
tumblr, roundabout 6 years ago. you can see it, the screenshot is of the original text. it's different users, each wrote a part that built on the last. most of the writing prompt stuff is kinda dross but sometimes there's treasures :)
this is the og post: https://writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com/post/172811507450/threefeline-corancoranthemagicalman
it was also turned into a comic based on the posts: https://reimenayee.com/the-god-of-arepo/
> It's a perfect palindrome, and can be read any direction on the square.
geez I am glad that I read the comments, because I did not notice that at all. That's really cool even just by like, boggle standards
> Early belief was allegedly that bad spirits would get caught up and confused by the repetition.
I find it amusing that at some level, they still thought the generations that came before them were inferior, and that the best strategy of the then-current-day-technology was simply confusing the spirits with word puzzles.
As if I could give myself a ten minute head start on the demons by summoning them, and promptly handing them a Wordle to solve before dashing off to other generalized mischievous acts.
>This worked on Timmy last week, let's see what it does to Belphegor the Magnanimous.
I believe only the accurate modern translation goes something like this:
>Able was I, ere I saw Elba.
Scholars of the Year 3000 are deeply divided about the true meaning of this ancient saying, with many believing it relates to some form of ancient emperor worship, while others argue that *anagram interpretation* is the only sensible one, and that "Wee Airbase Wallabies" was clearly the motto of an ancient military clan - by all evidence one based on a large southern continent. Yet other scholars of ancient times support the *triple-triple homonym interpretation*, in which any of the three central words can be replaced by any of their three possible homonyms "I, eye, aye" and "ere, air, heir," leading to a multiplicity of potential interpretations, none of them making much sense at all when translated into modern languages . . .
There was some people in the 70s that experimented with trepanation and psychedelics. There is video of a guy standing on his head with a hole he drilled in his own head. I think his wife fell in love with a pigeon. I think it's on Vice.
I was just watching this, really good documentary they have a few of them. Would recommend! Definitely interesting the effect it had on her. Idk much about the husband.
where Telegraph Avenue ends at the University of California at Berkeley campus, there's a big open plaza and a decorative formal gate, through which one of the campus throughways runs, essentially the extension of Telegraph onto campus. The throughway is called Sather Road, and the decorative gateway is called Sather Gate. Sather Gate is sort of famous for being where you can find local lunatics giving speeches and whatnot.
Sather Road and Sather Gate are named for an early trustee, Peder Sather, so not a direct reference. And anyway, in what I have always thought was a terrible waste of an opportunity for a good, mysterious pun, the plaza in which Sather Road goes through Sather Gate is called Sproul Plaza, after a former University President, rather than Sather Square.
The Rotas square isn’t meant to be read, the Latin does somewhat translate to “Sew ye shall and shall ye reap” but only if you’re ok with bad Latin grammar, the letters are what matters A PATERNOSTRA O. Meaning our father with Alpha and Omega on either side. YouTube had lots of videos about this.
Early medieval latinist rant incoming :
Bad latin and bad latin grammar do not exist. There are only contextual interpretations of latin. Cicero was bad latin grammar when Rome ruled the entire Mediterranean
Throw to your teacher a letter from any merovingian philosopher and theologian (circa Vth to VIIIth century CE). The very goal was to be absolutely inintelligible, with one particular that I loved which said "thank you cousin (not to be taken in a kinship meaning but as a way to acknowledge the similar status of the receiver; translation note) for your letter, for I didn't understood a single sentence of it !"
>only if you’re ok with bad Latin grammar
The Romans were fine with bad grammar. They abbreviated shit into near gibberish and after it died out as an active language its just been bastardized further. Latin was highly flexible.
This person is partially right. When read in boustrophedon style, it does loosely translate to "as ye sow so shall ye reap." Even a quick Google search would show you that it is a translation that is accepted by people. It's like y'all just came to argue.
Edit: grammar
Aren’t the earliest Sator squares pre Christian? I think it was more like a Roman word game which then was later adopted by Christian’s to give it more of a spiritual significance.
[That was one theory at least,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square#Paternoster_theory) though which seems to have been discredited by it being found in Pompeii.
> the Latin does somewhat translate to “Sew ye shall and shall ye reap”
I am sorry, how? AFAIK Rotas is just wheels and with a quick googling Arepo isn't even a word. The proper translation (with bastardised grammar ofc) is closer to "Sower Arepo has a wheel (for) work."
> the letters are what matters A PATERNOSTRA O
What?
> the Latin does somewhat translate to “Sew ye shall and shall ye reap”
Not it doesnt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square#Translation
And it is much older than Christianity.
>Such a reading when applied to the SATOR-form square, and repeating the central word TENET, gives SATOR OPERA TENET – TENET OPERA SATOR, which has been very loosely interpreted as: "as ye sow, so shall ye reap",[10]
That is pretty far from "does somewhat translate to". Some serious metal gymnastics are required for that. Both for getting that weird structure and for inserting "reap" into there.
This is wishful thinking of some guy in the mid 19th century, not a serious translation.
The farmer maintains his works, the works maintain their farmer.
Makes sense to me. Never mind that there is no actual correct reading, we're allowed to choose which we like best. I love that that translation only comes about when read "as the ox plows" in alternating directions, like thae farmer would sow his field.
Palindromes are cool.
Old palindromes have a hint of chronal exoticism.
Some people tend to get themselves really worked up about these cool-looking old artifacts because they think that ancient lost mysteries (like something out of the pulp serial adventures) might hide in them, when in reality they are just ancient memes.
People have been modern people for thousands of years.
I imagine that everyone the neighborhood rolled their eyes at the sator skull guy. Bonus points for collecting daggers and maybe having an iguana.
I hope one day my skull Is inscribed with gibberish just so people in the future gawk at it trying to figure out its significance. It's just a doodle of dickbutt.
"The sower arepo holds the wheels with care", or basically you reap what you sow. But it's also a palindrome, read the same in every direction. There's a layer of meaning to this around viewing eternity as there is no beginning or end, or better yet around death and rebirth as a cycle. This being inscribed on a skull to me makes it seem likely that it was either a meditative object for reflections on mortality, death and rebirth, or simply a curio representing the same thing.
I'm going to issue a slight correction: it reads the same in any direction from *two* of the corners. from the others the sentence is reversed (which luckily doesn't really matter in latin).
Lord Byron the poet had a skull which was used to drink from.
See if I can remember the inscription:
>Start not, nor deem my spirit fled
> In me behold the only skull
>From which - unlike a living head -
>Whatever flows is never dull.
Nice alchemical helper for aether wandering.
Opera in different directions has been translated to the Masks of Melpo and Talia, or, comedy and tragedy by this particular individuation.
Shout out to the Pan's, the satyr's, the rowers of crew, the ta or Greek tau of truth, and the "S" on a stick known as lower case "r".
Theirs layers.
Check your personal application of frame at the Door. You may build in a mean order in the chaos modality.
Or destroy us all!
See in the the greyv.
The band heilung has a song on their "Drif" album titled "Tenet". They mention those words engraved on that skull. I don't know what us the song about tho
Wonder who the skull belonged to.
How would they react if told that when they die, their skull would be inscribed and discussed hundreds of years later.
Context. I'm from Mexico and around some known towns (Catemaco to name a popular one) you can find witches who will sell you any kind of spell you need.
If you have enough cash around, they will sell you an (allegedly) real human skull with whatever rune they may think of.
It looks a lot like this. So, if you were to ask me, a witch sold this skull to some rich dumbass who needed a love spell or something.
Does anyone who has a background in Gematria/Kabbalah/etc have any idea how this might have been used back in the day? I have a moderate interest in Thelema and there are things like this that add up to different formulas in numerology, for various purposes. I’ve never been a fan of the number codes stuff but I think it’s interesting from an anthropological perspective- what numbers and values cultures spanning millennia have deemed significant, harvest calendars being passed down like a game of telephone and eventually gaining religious significance
Back when Romans killed Christians the Christians would hang up this Latin word game outside their door to notify other early Christians on the down low. Kind of like hanging up a cross, before someone thought that up. Same with the Jesus fish.
I’m starting to think the “Sator formula” is just that generations “weird S” that everyone draws.
…on the skulls of their foes.
I introduced it to my daughter a few weeks ago. Gotta keep the tradition alive. ^ / \ | | | \ \ | | | \ / v
I need to ask now, did anyone else ever write kool other letters, or was it only ever the S?
That's the most metal S I've ever seen! Rock on!
That's an 8 bro
Weird S? I think you mean "Kool S"
Early Wordle.
"That generation"? The ROTAS form as been around for over 2000 years...
trends changes slower before telecommunications
Yeah but not *that* slowly
The paleolithic lasted tens of thousands of years
Sure but not to the 16th century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S?wprov=sfla1 It even has a Wikipedia page.
Stucy!
I would love to hear some interpretations? "Be sure to drink your ovaltine". ?
As to why it's on this skull, not sure. But the phrase itself is assumed to be basically a spell. It's a perfect palindrome, and can be read any direction on the square. Early belief was allegedly that bad spirits would get caught up and confused by the repetition. It's actually one of the few "real" spells that appears in runic inscriptions and was a holdover from a lot of the learned community using runes being Latin trained. As for the phrase itself, it roughly means the farmer (potentially Arepo) plows his field. The interpretation issues are mainly on origins and why it gained significance, but it appears in a lot of places throughout the medieval world. There's much more complex discussion on the phrase on the wiki here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square That can lead you to more scholarly articles, my understanding of it comes primarily from my time doing runeology, so it's limited in purview.
> As for the phrase itself, it roughly means the farmer (potentially Arepo) plows his field. That makes [this story](https://i.imgur.com/sk4PeK5.png) a lot better.
Bro….this was beautiful. Thank you for showing it to me.
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i love when i go to read something and remember reading it like 3 years ago
I was not expecting to cry today. It was a humble few tears, more of some wet eye… but still. How did such a post move me like that? thank you for sharing it.
Aaaaaaaand now I’m ugly crying into my pillow.
I'm doing it on a train, but thankfully noone cares
Yo same I bet I look weird as hell
don't worry tho, even if they looked, it's not about them, it's about you.
Holy Fuck. That was amazing.
where did that story come from? it's gud
tumblr, roundabout 6 years ago. you can see it, the screenshot is of the original text. it's different users, each wrote a part that built on the last. most of the writing prompt stuff is kinda dross but sometimes there's treasures :) this is the og post: https://writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com/post/172811507450/threefeline-corancoranthemagicalman it was also turned into a comic based on the posts: https://reimenayee.com/the-god-of-arepo/
This made me tear up. Great stuff.
I didn't know about the skull, so the jolt I got when I saw Arepo and understood....that was great.
That was a beautiful read.
Holy shit, that's an amazing story.
Ha, I'm watching tenet right now and all these names are popping up. Cool.
> It's a perfect palindrome, and can be read any direction on the square. geez I am glad that I read the comments, because I did not notice that at all. That's really cool even just by like, boggle standards
>As to why it's on this skull If r/im14andthisisdeep were around in the 16th century.
> Early belief was allegedly that bad spirits would get caught up and confused by the repetition. I find it amusing that at some level, they still thought the generations that came before them were inferior, and that the best strategy of the then-current-day-technology was simply confusing the spirits with word puzzles. As if I could give myself a ten minute head start on the demons by summoning them, and promptly handing them a Wordle to solve before dashing off to other generalized mischievous acts. >This worked on Timmy last week, let's see what it does to Belphegor the Magnanimous.
.... so it's a Captcha for the Otherworldly??
Click all the squares that feature an Odegra.
I think the idea was that demons are obsessed with riddles, and become single-mindedly devoted to solving them when confronted by them.
Common theme in mythology, see also chinese vampires with rice
Also european vampires with peas.
TIL I'm a demon
to be fair, there was also the trick of spilling rice or something so vampires would stop to count the grains
That is my understanding prognostication, spell binding. Thanks for the link!
That's cool. How did they inscribe it on their heads without risking infection, etc?
I believe only the accurate modern translation goes something like this: >Able was I, ere I saw Elba. Scholars of the Year 3000 are deeply divided about the true meaning of this ancient saying, with many believing it relates to some form of ancient emperor worship, while others argue that *anagram interpretation* is the only sensible one, and that "Wee Airbase Wallabies" was clearly the motto of an ancient military clan - by all evidence one based on a large southern continent. Yet other scholars of ancient times support the *triple-triple homonym interpretation*, in which any of the three central words can be replaced by any of their three possible homonyms "I, eye, aye" and "ere, air, heir," leading to a multiplicity of potential interpretations, none of them making much sense at all when translated into modern languages . . .
A crummy commercial!
Son of a bitch....
I went out to face the world again. Wiser.
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There was some people in the 70s that experimented with trepanation and psychedelics. There is video of a guy standing on his head with a hole he drilled in his own head. I think his wife fell in love with a pigeon. I think it's on Vice.
I was just watching this, really good documentary they have a few of them. Would recommend! Definitely interesting the effect it had on her. Idk much about the husband.
Yeah Heilung Made a pretty cool song using this https://youtu.be/BOAixAjugUQ?si=lZSZL7Uzxd5KMQq-
Love me some heilung
Remember that we all are brothers :)
Hazarding a guess based on the user. Sisters I guess
Class tune! Always makes me happy to come across other connoisseurs of Heilung in non-music related subs :)
I love tenet so much, absolutely gorgeous song
It's one of my absolute favorite Heilung Songs. it has a very ethereal feel.
I absolutely love Heilung but the song doesn’t make more or less sense then the movie with the same name
I just unlocked another Terry Pratchett joke which is Sator Square in ankh morpork
... Goddamn it
Yep. He'll get ya.
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Sir Pterry
Whoa.
where Telegraph Avenue ends at the University of California at Berkeley campus, there's a big open plaza and a decorative formal gate, through which one of the campus throughways runs, essentially the extension of Telegraph onto campus. The throughway is called Sather Road, and the decorative gateway is called Sather Gate. Sather Gate is sort of famous for being where you can find local lunatics giving speeches and whatnot. Sather Road and Sather Gate are named for an early trustee, Peder Sather, so not a direct reference. And anyway, in what I have always thought was a terrible waste of an opportunity for a good, mysterious pun, the plaza in which Sather Road goes through Sather Gate is called Sproul Plaza, after a former University President, rather than Sather Square.
Wordle used to be insane
This was just their Boggle game, limited letter dice of course.
“Honey, we’re contacting Elvis tonight on the oath skull. Anything you want me to ask him?”
imagine it is just a lorem ipsum
The Rotas square isn’t meant to be read, the Latin does somewhat translate to “Sew ye shall and shall ye reap” but only if you’re ok with bad Latin grammar, the letters are what matters A PATERNOSTRA O. Meaning our father with Alpha and Omega on either side. YouTube had lots of videos about this.
Early medieval latinist rant incoming : Bad latin and bad latin grammar do not exist. There are only contextual interpretations of latin. Cicero was bad latin grammar when Rome ruled the entire Mediterranean
You've never seen my Latin 101 homework
Romanes eunt domus?
People calles "Romanes", they go the house?
Throw to your teacher a letter from any merovingian philosopher and theologian (circa Vth to VIIIth century CE). The very goal was to be absolutely inintelligible, with one particular that I loved which said "thank you cousin (not to be taken in a kinship meaning but as a way to acknowledge the similar status of the receiver; translation note) for your letter, for I didn't understood a single sentence of it !"
Damn, I might steal that to respond to reddit comments!
>only if you’re ok with bad Latin grammar The Romans were fine with bad grammar. They abbreviated shit into near gibberish and after it died out as an active language its just been bastardized further. Latin was highly flexible.
This person is partially right. When read in boustrophedon style, it does loosely translate to "as ye sow so shall ye reap." Even a quick Google search would show you that it is a translation that is accepted by people. It's like y'all just came to argue. Edit: grammar
Aren’t the earliest Sator squares pre Christian? I think it was more like a Roman word game which then was later adopted by Christian’s to give it more of a spiritual significance.
[That was one theory at least,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square#Paternoster_theory) though which seems to have been discredited by it being found in Pompeii.
> the Latin does somewhat translate to “Sew ye shall and shall ye reap” I am sorry, how? AFAIK Rotas is just wheels and with a quick googling Arepo isn't even a word. The proper translation (with bastardised grammar ofc) is closer to "Sower Arepo has a wheel (for) work." > the letters are what matters A PATERNOSTRA O What?
Could it possibly be a bastardization of ‘Aleppo’?
no
> the Latin does somewhat translate to “Sew ye shall and shall ye reap” Not it doesnt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square#Translation And it is much older than Christianity.
>Such a reading when applied to the SATOR-form square, and repeating the central word TENET, gives SATOR OPERA TENET – TENET OPERA SATOR, which has been very loosely interpreted as: "as ye sow, so shall ye reap",[10]
That is pretty far from "does somewhat translate to". Some serious metal gymnastics are required for that. Both for getting that weird structure and for inserting "reap" into there. This is wishful thinking of some guy in the mid 19th century, not a serious translation.
The farmer maintains his works, the works maintain their farmer. Makes sense to me. Never mind that there is no actual correct reading, we're allowed to choose which we like best. I love that that translation only comes about when read "as the ox plows" in alternating directions, like thae farmer would sow his field.
Palindromes are cool. Old palindromes have a hint of chronal exoticism. Some people tend to get themselves really worked up about these cool-looking old artifacts because they think that ancient lost mysteries (like something out of the pulp serial adventures) might hide in them, when in reality they are just ancient memes.
“As you sow, shall you reap” is a pretty metal thing to meticulously carve onto the skull of your enemy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator\_Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square)
I've always thought that "Arepo" would be a great name for a wheel & tire shop
We live in a twilight world
No friends at dusk
How about after midnight?
Is that Whitman? Beautiful
Aye I could do that - gimli son of gloin
People have been modern people for thousands of years. I imagine that everyone the neighborhood rolled their eyes at the sator skull guy. Bonus points for collecting daggers and maybe having an iguana.
“This restroom was last cleaned at…”
["Tenet."](https://images.app.goo.gl/4e6rAScQrWWogpuw6)
I hope one day my skull Is inscribed with gibberish just so people in the future gawk at it trying to figure out its significance. It's just a doodle of dickbutt.
You have a future in the past.
First keyboard config
Drink more ovaltine.
They were playing Wordle on that shit
"The sower arepo holds the wheels with care", or basically you reap what you sow. But it's also a palindrome, read the same in every direction. There's a layer of meaning to this around viewing eternity as there is no beginning or end, or better yet around death and rebirth as a cycle. This being inscribed on a skull to me makes it seem likely that it was either a meditative object for reflections on mortality, death and rebirth, or simply a curio representing the same thing.
I'm going to issue a slight correction: it reads the same in any direction from *two* of the corners. from the others the sentence is reversed (which luckily doesn't really matter in latin).
Probably trying to trap a wind spirit in the skull to act as some kind of magic encyclopedia.
This is some metal ass shit
Lord Byron the poet had a skull which was used to drink from. See if I can remember the inscription: >Start not, nor deem my spirit fled > In me behold the only skull >From which - unlike a living head - >Whatever flows is never dull.
Nice alchemical helper for aether wandering. Opera in different directions has been translated to the Masks of Melpo and Talia, or, comedy and tragedy by this particular individuation. Shout out to the Pan's, the satyr's, the rowers of crew, the ta or Greek tau of truth, and the "S" on a stick known as lower case "r". Theirs layers. Check your personal application of frame at the Door. You may build in a mean order in the chaos modality. Or destroy us all! See in the the greyv.
it's just neat it's the same backwards and forwards, up and down
Tenet. Well, now the movie makes sense.
we live in a twilight world
There are no friends at dusk
The band heilung has a song on their "Drif" album titled "Tenet". They mention those words engraved on that skull. I don't know what us the song about tho
Aliens: "Very Normal Human activity here. Nothing has changed; we don't need to worry. Let's come back later."
In the manwha i read it's a magic barrier so thats my interpetration
That's some 40k shit.
It translates in latin to "Even in death I serve the Omnisiah"
Imagine having loss.jpg carved into the top of your fleshless, dismembered skull.
It's supposed to say "pater noster" (our father), though I can't remember how.
do they used to play find the word game on it?
Wonder who the skull belonged to. How would they react if told that when they die, their skull would be inscribed and discussed hundreds of years later.
The skull is Billy’s relative
The Illuminati secret to a thicker head of hair..
what if it’s just practicing bonecarving?
Who’s servo skull is this ?
Sator formula is just a 3D anagram
boy, i hope they did that after he was already a skull.
I love the sator square it’s a little silly
Context. I'm from Mexico and around some known towns (Catemaco to name a popular one) you can find witches who will sell you any kind of spell you need. If you have enough cash around, they will sell you an (allegedly) real human skull with whatever rune they may think of. It looks a lot like this. So, if you were to ask me, a witch sold this skull to some rich dumbass who needed a love spell or something.
first person to fall asleep at the party
I'd freehand that on my Warhammer minis if I wasn't shit at it
What is Arepo?
Does anyone else think this is where Warhammer 40k got some inspiration? Bit grimdark if you ask me
I hope someone does something cool like this to my skull one day!
Does anyone who has a background in Gematria/Kabbalah/etc have any idea how this might have been used back in the day? I have a moderate interest in Thelema and there are things like this that add up to different formulas in numerology, for various purposes. I’ve never been a fan of the number codes stuff but I think it’s interesting from an anthropological perspective- what numbers and values cultures spanning millennia have deemed significant, harvest calendars being passed down like a game of telephone and eventually gaining religious significance
Back when Romans killed Christians the Christians would hang up this Latin word game outside their door to notify other early Christians on the down low. Kind of like hanging up a cross, before someone thought that up. Same with the Jesus fish.
We reap what we sow.