Saturn’s second pentacle meets adversity with a twenty-five-letter square and a promise to repress spirit pride. Mathers connects its Hebrew grid to the famous SATOR word puzzle and builds a numerical argument around the divine name IHVH. [1]
Mathers 1889 · Book I, chapter XVIII; printed p. 59; figure 12, Plate II; plate PDF page 67
Against adversities, and especially to repress the pride of spirits. [1]
Design
A five-by-five Hebrew letter square, compared by Mathers with SATOR–AREPO–TENET–OPERA–ROTAS, sits inside Psalm 72:8. [1]
Source reproduction The 2nd Pentacle of Saturn: the Hebrew word square Mathers associates with SATOR, within Psalm 72:8. Mathers 1889, Plate II, figure 12; notice on p. 59.
Adversity and spirit pride
The second Saturn notice assigns the figure a broad protective use against adversities and a particular use in repressing the pride of spirits. Twenty-five Hebrew characters fill its five-by-five grid, with a verse of dominion in the enclosing circular band. [1]
The SATOR arrangement
Mathers compares the square with the five Latin words SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA and ROTAS. Its five lines also read as columns, and beginning at the opposite corner gives the same sequence. The plate presents the pattern in Hebrew characters; it does not print the Latin words in the cells. [1]
The editor claims that the celebrated word square derives from this pentacle. His note praises its double-acrostic arrangement and refers to medieval magical records, but supplies no separate historical demonstration of that proposed origin. [1]
Twenty-five, unity and dominion
Mathers first counts twenty-five cells and adds one—the “unity”—to obtain twenty-six. That matches the numerical value of IHVH: Yod is ten, He five, Vau six and the final He five. His note also counts twenty-five Hebrew letters in the surrounding Psalm sentence. [1]
He then makes a second, more elaborate comparison: the verse’s letter values, using enlarged values for final Hebrew forms, are added to Elohim’s value and said to equal the total of the square’s letters. The enclosing words themselves come from Psalm 72:8, extending dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. [1][2]
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, 1889; printed edition, including editorial restoration of Hebrew characters. Book I, chapter XVIII; printed p. 59; figure 12, Plate II; plate PDF page 67; Complete Saturn notices and notes, printed pp. 58–61 (PDF pp. 65, 68–69, 74); general Book I VIII pp. 39–41 and XVIII pp. 56–57
