Rosalía’s “Divinize” is a profound, mystical exploration of how to achieve a divine state through the physical body. The song’s central meaning is that the path to holiness is not found by denying the body, but by using its temptations, pain, and experiences as the very tools for transcendence. She claims she was “made to divinize,” turning her own physical form—her spine, her skin—into a sacred object of worship.
This track, the third on the album LUX, is a direct answer to the questions posed by the first two songs. After struggling to love both the “world” and “God,” and then turning her life’s “losses” into “relics,” “Divinize” is the instruction manual. It explains how she merges the profane and the sacred. She does it by biting the forbidden fruit on purpose, accepting the pain that follows, and turning her own body into a rosary.
The Forbidden Fruit and the Living Ghost
The song immediately establishes its central theme with a riddle about a “red and round fruit.” The answer is, of course, the “forbidden” apple. This is a direct reference to the Garden of Eden and the concept of original sin. The song suggests that a person could be “saved” if they “only look” but “without biting.” This sets up the song’s core conflict: the safe path of denial versus the dangerous path of experience.
Rosalía’s answer is clear. She reveals that this temptation, this “ghost,” is “still alive.” In fact, she declares that it is “more alive than ever.” This isn’t a confession of weakness; it’s a statement of intent. She is not going to “just look.” She is choosing to engage with the “forbidden” because she knows it is a necessary part of her transformation. The “sin” is not a bug; it’s a feature.
This “living ghost” is her own primal, human desire. Instead of casting it out, she is embracing it. She understands that to “divinize,” she must first be fully, dangerously human. The path to the light begins with a conscious decision to engage with the darkness of temptation.
The Body as a Vessel for Light
The chorus is the song’s thesis, a powerful declaration of purpose. She claims that she “was made to divinize.” This is her destiny. The process is a physical one. She states that “through my body, you can see the light.” Her physical form is not a prison for her soul; it is a lens, a prism that allows the divine to become visible.
This process is not gentle. It requires immense sacrifice. She invites the world to “bruise me up,” a sign of her willingness to endure pain and suffering to achieve this state. She follows this by saying she will “eat all of my pride.” This is a profound act of humility and submission. To become divine, she must destroy her own ego.
This dual sacrifice—of the body to pain and the ego to humility—is the price of transcendence. The song repeats the words “outside me” and “inside me,” suggesting a chant. This ritual is designed to break down the barrier between her internal self and the external world, merging them into one holy state.
The Vertigo of Desire
The song then explores the nature of this “divinizing” process through a series of complex, paradoxical images in her native Catalan. She describes a “hunger” for a “king” who “commands her.” This could be God, a lover, or the divine principle itself. The key is that “she feels more loved / In the vertigo of the body.”
This is a radical statement. She finds divine love not in quiet prayer or peaceful meditation, but in the dizzying, chaotic, overwhelming “vertigo” of physical experience. She is “chasing grace,” but she is chasing it through sensation. This directly links back to the “forbidden fruit”—the knowledge gained from the “bite” is the knowledge of the body, and it is in this vertigo that she feels closest to God.
This section confirms that her path to the divine is not an intellectual one. It is visceral, physical, and requires total immersion in the world of sensation. The “sexo, violencia y llantas” from the first track are not obstacles to her spirituality; they are the raw materials for it.
The Divine Void and Pain as Pleasure
Just as the listener gets comfortable with this idea of physical ecstasy, the song introduces a profound contradiction. It speaks of “an absence that satisfies” and the “divina buidor,” or “the divine emptiness.” This is the other side of the coin. After the “vertigo of the body,” she finds a holy void.
This is a classic concept from religious mysticism. She finds fullness in emptiness. The song goes even further, describing “pain” as a “delicacy” or “delight.” This is not a celebration of suffering, but a statement of its transformative power. The pain from being “bruised” becomes a source of ecstatic, divine connection.
The paradox deepens. She is “nourished by coldness” from the moon’s rays. And in the song’s most stunning twist, she states that “to deprive oneself is the indulgence / That she practices for love.” Asceticism—denying the self—becomes the ultimate act of pleasure, an “indulgence.” She has completely inverted the normal meanings of pain, pleasure, loss, and gain.
The Spine as a Sacred Rosary
Rosalía then provides the song’s most powerful and concrete image for this transformation. She sings that “each vertebra reveals a mystery” and instructs the listener to “pray on my spine, it’s a rosary.” This is the literal act of “divinizing.” She has turned her own human body into a sacred object.
A rosary is a tool used for prayer and meditation on the “mysteries” of faith. By claiming her spine is a rosary, she is stating that her own life, her own body, holds its own set of holy mysteries. Her backbone, the very thing that holds her up, is a text for divine contemplation.
This image is the ultimate fusion of the album’s themes. The “relics” from the previous song are no longer just scattered pieces; her entire body is now one complete, holy relic. The physical “mundo” (world) and the spiritual “Dios” (God) are no longer separate. They are fused in her very vertebrae.
The Beginning of a New Form
The song’s conclusion describes the final stage of this transformation. She explains that “the lines of her body / Are becoming blurred.” Her physical form is dissolving, losing its distinct edges. She is approaching “the frontier,” the border between the human and the divine, the physical and the spiritual.
She openly acknowledges that this process is alienating. “Not everyone will understand it,” she sings, “and she doesn’t expect it.” This is a lonely, personal journey. To the outside world, this dissolution of the self might look like a breakdown or an “end.”
But Rosalía delivers a final, triumphant message. “They think it’s the end,” she sings, “but it’s just beginning.” The blurring of her body is not death; it is birth. It is the beginning of her new form as a “divinized” being. By choosing to bite the fruit, endure the pain, and turn her body into an object of prayer, she has achieved the “LUX,” the light. She has become her own sacred text.