My Roots Go Deep

Marketa Irglova sings from the belly of the earth, from that fervid and numinous interior where the little known star, Botein, chimes her undertone. Mar embodies the very teaching that this Celestial Music has been playing into the fertile dark that the roots of a thing go deepest in the darkness, drawing their most sustaining and luminous nourishment from the chthonic deep, from the sacred space within the self wherein loss is held with the reverence and the patience of a Guardian who serves to remind you that the void is the womb of all creation.

Grief is soul-soil, the very substance that gives the roots something to hold onto, the weight that keeps the sOul from being blown away by life’s incessant changes, and it is this very fact that places her within Botein’s guardianship, for she too understands that sorrow is the fertile dark wherein the most sustaining and luminous nourishment is found.

When grief is tended with Botein’s unhurried devotion, an alchemical sanctuary takes place as the seeds of what has been surrendered composting slowly in the dark into something richer and more ardent than what arrived, the vis vitalis of the chthonic deep animating and enlivening itself in the darkness with the same immemorial patience with which the earth tends everything surrendered into her keeping. It is in this sacred space, this sanctuary of the self where the roots go deepest, that Botein’s most intimate and personal teaching finds its expression.

The Heavenly Harp playing its numinous serenade into the fertile dark, coaxing the delicate buds of renewal to unfurl in their own sovereign time, as Mar herself has done, drawing from the depths of her own experience a music so rooted and so luminously alive that you can feel it in your bones, your belly and at the base of your spine, where all true things are felt. Mar’s years of living in austere and breathtaking wilderness of an Icelandic landscape that encourages a particular quality of interior listening, is what this song celebrates - the shift from searching for love to being love, just as many of us can recognise when you move from the turbulent seeking of the younger self to the unshakeable poise of someone who has allowed their roots to go as deep as grief, and when you acknowledge that the tears of your past watered the person you have become.

Moreover, the swan feather ring, a weathered token of a love that has changed shape but remained part of her foundation, is Botein’s own image rendered personal and intimate, the symbol of what has been composted in the dark and emerged transformed, the chthonic life force tended through seasons of loss and dormancy until it rises again as something richer and more luminous than what it was.

I hope you hear beyond the lyrics, the place that Botein prepares for her, for you, that space within where the roots go deepest, where grief is a hallowed and grounding force, where your sOul attains the unshakeable poise of a being whose branches ascend with greater majesty toward the divine.

I would like to offer the following questions for those who like to reflect on the week’s energetics:

Where in your own life has grief revealed itself as soul-soil, as the very substance that has given your roots something to hold onto, and what has grown from that dark and fervid interior that could only have grown there?

In what ways are you being invited, in this season of your life, to tend the sacred space within yourself with Botein’s celestial patience, to stomach the renewal of what is preparing to emerge rather than reaching prematurely for the light?

And finally, I’d like to end this summary with a blessing

May you find within the dark and fertile interior of your own being the sacred space that Botein tends with her immemorial and numinous music, the sanctuary wherein your grief is held with reverence and your losses composted with the unhurried devotion of the earth herself.

May your roots go as deep as your sorrow has taken you, drawing from the chthonic deep the most sustaining and luminous nourishment, the ancient gold that no surface gaze has ever been able to reach.

May the tears that have watered your becoming be honoured as the most ardent of all possible expressions of love, and may you find in the quietude, the unshakeable poise of your sOul whose branches have ascended with greater majesty toward the divine.

And may the Heavenly Harp playing its serenade into the fertile dark, sing you back into the luminous and inexhaustible life force that you have always been, dreaming a new world into being from the sacred and sovereign depths of your own most luminous interior.