Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/213

 io-s. iv. AUG. 26,1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 175 •sophical application of the principle that the smell of a rose is independent of its name suffices to smooth over many trivial incpn gruities which a reader may chance to notice J. DORMER. George III. was born 24 May, 1738, O.S which is equivalent to 4 June, 1738, N.S. Consequently there is no need to draw a distinction between the two dates by alluding to them as "actual" and "assigned." Nor is there any justification for calling a logical change of an O.S. date into the corresponding N.S. date, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted, "tinkering." Such changes were frequently made by educated persons. For example, John Wesley was born 17 June, 1703, O.S., but after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar he, very properly, re- cognized the corresponding N.S. date 28 June as the anniversary of his birthday. Frequent references to it in his journals abundantly prove this. His modern followers, less logical than their founder, ignored his precept and practice when, two years ago, they held the bicentenary celebrations of his birth. E. G. B. NELSON COLUMN (10th S. iii. 368, 456).—It may be of interest to note in connexion with this query that William Behnes, in his ' Letter to the Committee appointed to select a De- sign," <kc. (1839), suggested an edifice with a base 140 ft. in diameter, with carriage drives through it and containing two mausolea or depositories for the cenotaphs and monuments of illustrious persons. This was to support an obelisk provided with a staircase, which was surmounted by a Grecian Doric column, capped by a colossal bronze figure of Nelson. The whole height of the monument would be 300 ft. ! The site was in a line with the Strand and Spring Gardens, to the north of the statue of King Charles. The Square suffers for many sins of ugliness, but it was spared this monstrosity. ALECK ABRAHAMS. 39, Hillmarton Road, X. PALINDROME (10th S. iii. 249, 310, 375; iv. 35).—At whatever result ingenious specula- tion may arrive respecting the meaning of 'irepo, the fact will always remain that it is no more than opera, read backwards. The_ particular class of cabalistic formulre to which sator, &c., belongs, is known in the language of magicians as a " pentacle," all of which possess the same characteristics. Each •consists of three elements of five letters. arranged in three consecutive lines, the third always being so composed as to read alike in both directions. The perfect " peutacle" consists of twenty-five letters, grouped round one in the centre; in the sator, <fec., it is Jf. No doubt this and others go back to Roman times, most likely very far beyond ; certainly the analogous magic squares, in which the rows of numbers added in every direction total the same sum, were well known, and were, as now, used as "proper- ties " in various sorts of enchantment. I have seen a magic square of bronze worn by a man in South Italy as a protection against the Evil Eye, and I possess two such, totalling respectively fifteen and thirty-four. It is most likely that the sator pentacle owes its special notoriety to the fact that its compounds (except arepo) strike the popular eye as words that may be pronounced, and be capable of some sort of translation. It is, however, the combination of the separate letters that gives any value to the resulting word, whether readable or not. Therefore the five words of the pentacle have their power wholly independent of any literary sense that may be ascribed to them, while their meaning to the magician is something very different. Frommann ('De Fascinatione,' 1675, p. 46) prescribes how to use sator, &c., with the proper ceremony, as a certain cure for the bite of a mad dog, adding, " Servatusque est immunis a maximo periculo." He goes on to say that the same ceremonies (^without the pentacle) are good against the bite if accom- panied by the words Affra, Gaffra, Gajfri- tan, <fec. A much older writer gives an alternative to sator, »fec., as :— s A L o M A R E P O L E M E L O P E K A M O L A S Translated into occult language, this is " Salom—Peace, Arepo=he distils, Lemel= unto fullness, Opera = upon dry ground, Molas=in quick motion." He translates our palindrome: "Sator=the Creator, Arepo== Slow-moving, Tenet=maintains, Opera=his reations, Rotas=as vortices." From the same source we learn that both formulae are "to be used for obtaining the love of a maiden," but that salom, &c., is ilassed as " under Saturn," while sator, &c., 3 "under Venus." All this and a greal deal more is easily accessible in ' The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, 1458' (translated iy MacGregor-Mathers, London, 1898). Here t appears that these formulae are all Hebrew n origin — that sator, <fcc., is but a ren-