Do you feel the world is more than dense reality?

Sator is an app for reading energies, an esoteric weather forecast. It can draw tarot cards for you or interpret the spreads you draw yourself: a card of the day and spreads for any question. It also reads the Schumann resonance and what is happening in the cosmos: every day it gives an astrological overview and explains, in plain human language, how the movements of the planets affect collective processes and how people feel.

Our name comes from the Sator square, SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS: five Latin words set in a grid that reads the same from every side.

The oldest known examples were scratched into walls in Pompeii before AD 79, and for centuries people carved it on churches, doors and amulets as a protective charm. For us it is a picture of how the world works: everything is connected, and whichever way you read it, it comes back to the same meaning.

The meanings behind every reading belong to our co-founder Lucy, who has practised astrology for more than 10 years and tarot for more than 4 years. We were tired of clumsy, AI-generated interpretations on the internet, and we decided it was time to make an app that reads the cards the way an experienced practitioner does.

The Schumann resonances are natural electromagnetic waves that travel around the planet in the space between the Earth's surface and the ionosphere. Lightning all over the world keeps them going. The main one sits near 7.83 Hz, with weaker ones around 14, 20, 27 and 33 Hz.

Stations such as Tomsk in Siberia and Cumiana in Italy record them every day, and their strength rises and falls with thunderstorms and solar activity. In esoteric tradition this signal is read as the Earth's own background tone: an even signal for calm days, spikes for restless ones. Science has studied very little about how it affects people, so Sator shows the real measurements next to the traditional reading, and you can check for yourself whether your days match.

Every day Sator looks at the real sky, calculated from astronomical ephemerides: the phase of the Moon and the sign it is passing through, the lunar day, the Sun's sign, the planet that rules the day of the week, the aspects between planets (conjunctions, squares, trines, oppositions), retrograde periods and the days when a planet stops and turns, and the big points of the year: new and full moons, eclipses, equinoxes and solstices.

We translate all of this into plain language: what such a sky tends to bring to the collective mood and to how people feel, and when it is better to slow down or to act. For now the forecast is the same for everyone. Personalisation is coming soon: you will add your date, time and place of birth, and Sator will read the sky against your own natal chart.

For practising esotericists, for people who are just starting out on their spiritual path, and for sceptics who are curious what all this woo-woo stuff is about. We filter out the bullshit, and we hope our vision matches yours.

We were hardened sceptics once ourselves, and we know that, sadly, there is a lot of nonsense in esotericism. Both founders of Sator once went to astrologers and tarot readers who told them nonsense. Tarot readers, astrologers and channelers are people just like trolleybus drivers or manicurists: some are good at what they do, some are not.

We built Sator precisely because we know the method works, but not everyone uses it well. We want more people to have access to what works for us.

That's a very common fear. Tarot can't tell you what you are not asking about, so don't ask what you don't want to know. Many people are afraid that a tarot reader or a clairvoyant will tell them they are going to die soon or that their husband or wife will cheat on them. If this has happened to you or your friends, we are sorry: it means you came across a charlatan.

Even if a reader “never makes mistakes” and really did see something alarming, these are things that shouldn't be said out loud, because the cost of a mistake is too high and self-fulfilling prophecies are real. Tarot cards don't predict who will die and when. They only read the energies of the moment, and they can't say for sure whether your husband or wife will ever cheat on you. Think of tarot as a tool for introspection, not prediction.

That has to be your decision. Don't read the cards if you will feel shame or guilt, if you will be afraid, or if you will think you are talking to demons.

If you lean more towards curiosity, start with spreads about simple situations that don't carry much emotional charge for you, so it doesn't feel frightening, and notice how you feel. In our experience, tarot doesn't stop you from going to your place of worship, staying in your faith and feeling at home there.

We don't turn to demons, and we didn't turn to them while we were building Sator either. We see a tarot spread as reading the field and its energies, not as calling on a particular egregore, and certainly not on demonic beings. For us, tarot is a symbolic way of knowing the world. Some people come to know the world through feeling and intuition, when their intuition is well developed, but the symbolic images on the cards often help a great deal.

If you believe tarot and esotericism come from the devil, we would not recommend that you practise. Be careful: don't do rituals if you don't know what you are doing, if you are not sure you have set up protection, or if you are not sure whom you are addressing. If you don't know whom you are asking for guidance and you keep thinking about demons and fearing them, they are most likely the ones you will call in. Take care, and come back here if your view changes and you come to see tarot the way we do: as a way of knowing life, on the light side.

You can ask about anything, but it is important to understand that the cards themselves don't influence anything. They simply reflect, in symbols, the state of the field at the present moment. The best thing you can do with tarot is look at the state of the field around any question. For example: “What energies is Mr X in towards me?”, “What does our shared field look like?”, “What am I missing in this situation, and what should I pay attention to?”

Questions like “Will I always be happy if I marry Mr X?” or “Which job will always make me rich and successful?” don't work well. You can ask them, but better not to: nobody is constantly and steadily happy in a relationship, and no single profession will always bring you money and fulfilment. A little thought and a sober look at how life works are enough to see that. Tarot cards won't give you any guarantees, so don't use them to hand over responsibility for your decisions and your life. Use them to understand yourself and what is happening now better, as a hint about what to pay attention to, not as a 100% guide to action.

We also don't really believe in long-range prediction: energies keep changing, you change, other people change, the branches of probability change, and in our practice it has not proved possible to reliably predict events far in the future.