Languages: Spanish
Theme: Introduction to the theme of the album—the duality between the earthy and the divine
“Sexo, Violencia y Llantas” opens LUX with a presentation of the album's central conflict: the duality between the earthly and the divine. Rosalía starts the song by imagining what person could live between these two worlds:
Quién pudiera vivir entre los dos
Primero amar el mundo y luego amar a Dios
ENG:
Who(ever) could live between the two
First love the world, and then love God
Here, Rosalía reverses the conventional priorities of traditional Christian thought, in which loving God always comes first—the lyrics suggest a path of transcendence that begins in the physical world, in loving the world and its imperfection, and then transcends into loving God.
Quién pudiera venir de esta tierra
Y entrar en el cielo y volver a la tierra
Que entre la tierra, la tierra y el cielo
Nunca hubiera suelo
ENG:
Who(ever) could come from this earth
And enter heaven and return to earth
That between earth, earth, and heaven
There would never be ground
In the second verse, Rosalía continues to imagine a person who, having originated here on Earth, could enter the heavens and return again to Earth, and she imagines that the division between Earth and Heaven didn’t exist at all.
In traditional Christianity, the adherent’s ultimate goal is to leave behind the corrupted and impure world to ascend to divine grace (Read More: Eschatology). Rosalía, on the other hand, is expressing a longing to exist between both realms, transcending the divide between the earthly and the divine. Certain religious traditions—such as Eastern Christianity, Christian Mysticism, or Sufism (which is referenced later in LUX)—sometimes seek an inner, transformative union with the divine within the earthly realm, embracing the imperfection of the human condition as a reflection of God. This concept is known as Theosis or Divinization.
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Theosis is a Christian theological concept, also called divinization or deification, where a person becomes a participant in God's divine nature through the process of spiritual transformation. It is not about becoming a god, but about becoming fully the “divine image” in which humans were created, a process achieved through union with Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is a lifelong journey of becoming more holy and united with God.
A key concept of theosis/divinization is participation in the divine nature. The core idea is that believers can, by grace, become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
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Icon of The Ladder of Divine Ascent (the steps toward theosis) showing monks ascending and falling from the ladder to Jesus.
This concept of divinization will be referenced again in Track 3, Divinize. Throughout the album, there are recurring themes that connect to ideas planted in earlier tracks.
En el primero, sexo, violencia y llantas
Deportes de sangre, monedas en gargantas
En el segundo, destellos, palomas y santas
La gracia y el fruto, y el peso de la balanza
ENG:
In the first, sex, violence, and tires
Bloodshed, coins in throats
In the second, flashes, doves, and saints
Gracе, the fruit, and the weight of thе scales
In the first lines of the verse, Rosalía represents the earthly plane with sins and the roughness of human nature. Sex represents pleasure, tires represent human vices (possibly materialism/earthly desires and pride), and violence and bloodshed represent how the actions of men lead to humankind’s own detriment and destruction.
With coins in throats, she refers to Charon's Obol, an ancient rite that consisted of placing a coin in the mouth of the deceased to atone for sins and gain entry to the divine world.
