Roots — The Anthem of Soul-Betrayal and Survival

Roots is not a hymn of comfort.

It is the scream of one who was dragged into the mud, suffocated, betrayed, and left for dead — and who, instead of rotting, grew roots in the hollow.

Most people know betrayal through love or family. A spouse who cheats, a partner who abandons — this is agony, because you entrusted them with your daily life, your heart, your future. But there is something even more devastating: betrayal in the spiritual sphere.

When someone cheats on you, they trample the trust of your shared life. But when a teacher, a guru, or a spiritual guide betrays, they trample the trust of your soul. You gave them not only affection, but the most tender secrets of your being — your longing for God, your unguarded vulnerability, your willingness to be reshaped. And when that is desecrated, the wound is not just emotional. It shakes the foundations of existence itself.

This is why, for many sādhakas, spiritual betrayal is harder to survive than marital betrayal. You can rebuild a life after being abandoned by a partner. But when the one you thought carried the lamp of Truth instead feeds you darkness — it feels like the very ground beneath your soul has been stolen. For some, it leads to despair, collapse, even death.

And yet — in Kaula vision — even this desecration carries shakti. The knives of betrayal, if endured without collapsing into bitterness or cynicism, become the very tools that cut the last knots of dependence. What was meant to bury you becomes the soil of roots. What was meant to desecrate becomes initiation.

Roots is that initiation in sound. It refuses to polish pain into something palatable. It keeps the rage, the venom, the profanity intact — because real transmutation is not polite. It is not lotus petals, but teeth and blood. It is not temple incense, but smoke from the cremation ground.

This is why this song matters: it is not Devi singing from above. It is the sādhaka who survived soul-betrayal, crawling out of the grave dug by those they trusted most, and discovering that their roots now run deeper than the hollow itself.

[Verse 1]

I thank you for all the lives you've led
I thank you for every word you said
I thank you for walking away
I thank you (I thank you) for the promises you broke
For always watching, watching while I choke
I thank you for teaching me
Yes, I thank you for your hurting

This “thank you” is not polite gratitude. It is sarcasm sharpened into weaponry — but beneath it, something tantric is happening: the sādhaka refuses to call herself a victim. Every wound, every betrayal, every abandonment is acknowledged, named, and then claimed as fuel.

• “Lives you’ve led” — the abuser’s masks, their multiple faces, their shape-shifting roles. Each one was a lesson in illusion.

• “Every word you said” — the manipulations, the gaslighting, the half-truths — all of it becomes raw shakti once digested.

• “Walking away” & “promises you broke” — abandonment, betrayal, rejection. Instead of becoming scars of weakness, they become initiation scars.

• “Watching while I choke” — the cruelty of passive sadism. Not just the active blow, but the pleasure of watching someone drown. This is the ugra face of Shakti — She shows up not as rescuer, but as suffocation itself.

• “Thank you for teaching me… for your hurting” — the final twist: even their violence is seen as a disguised teaching. Not because it was just or kind, but because through it, strength was forged.

In Kaula vision, no energy is wasted.
Every betrayal is a voltage spike.
Every humiliation is a mirror of ego’s fragility.
Every abandonment is a stripping away of false ground.

This verse is the sādhaka bowing — not to the abusers as persons, but to the Shakti that used them as scalpels. The gratitude is fierce, bitter, even venomous — but it is real. It is the act of saying: your poison did not kill me; it fed my roots.

[Chorus]

I bite down a little harder, my blade's a little sharper
My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow
Strike back a little harder, I scream a little louder
My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow
I'm stronger than I ever knew, I'm strong because of you
I hit back a little louder, fuck you a little harder
My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow

Here the sarcastic “thank you” of the verse becomes alchemy in action. What was endured is now transformed into aggression, into power. The chorus is the ritual exhalation of all that was swallowed.

• “Bite down… blade’s sharper” — digestion is complete. Instead of choking on what was fed, she grinds it, chews it, and sharpens her weapon. The sādhaka who once choked on abuse now makes it her edge.

• “Roots run deep into the hollow” — strength doesn’t come from light above but from darkness below. This is smashan shakti: roots gripping soil soaked in blood and tears. Depth is won only in the hollow places where nothing comfortable grows.

• “Strike back… scream louder” — retaliation, yes, but not in the same mode as the abuser. This is not their sadism mirrored — it’s the sādhaka’s own roar, the ugra vow that no one can silence the awakened fire.

• “I’m strong because of you” — the fiercest paradox. Strength comes not despite the abuser, but because of them. Their violence became the crucible. Their betrayal became the training ground. The sādhaka spits venom and thanks in the same breath.

• “Fuck you a little harder” — this is where the sacred profane erupts. The sādhaka is not afraid of obscenity; rage itself becomes sacred. Even the curse-word becomes mantra — not to pollute, but to burn the last residue of victimhood.

This is the Kaula secret: transmutation, not denial.
The poison is not prayed away. The abuser is not erased. The energy is not moralized into “good” or “bad.” It is faced, swallowed, and spat back as strength.

The chorus is a war-cry, but deeper than vengeance. It says:
“Your violence fertilized my roots. Your betrayal gave me depth. You thought you buried me, but you planted me.”

[Verse 2]

I thank you for the hole you dug in me
Filled it with cement, sunk me in your sea
Thank you for being so obscene
I thank you (I thank you) for never facing me
Swimming in the mud, never coming clean
I thank you for nothing in between
Yes, I thank you for leaving

• “The hole you dug in me” — abuse is not light harm; it is excavation, leaving cavities inside. Trauma feels like an inner pit, an emptiness where something was violently ripped away.

• “Filled it with cement, sunk me in your sea” — cruelty tries not just to wound but to entomb. The abuser doesn’t stop at digging; they fill the wound with weight, pressing the victim beneath their ocean of filth. This is the suffocation, the drowning sensation of manipulation and control.

Yet — in Kaula reading — this “cement” becomes the very pressure against which the sādhaka’s roots push deeper. The heaviness becomes the density required for strength.

• “Thank you for being so obscene” — here obscenity isn’t sexual but spiritual: indecent cruelty, shameless desecration of trust. The sādhaka names it bluntly, without sanitizing.

• “Never facing me, swimming in the mud” — abusers often avoid true confrontation; they thrive in murk, indirect attacks, manipulative swamps. They wallow in mud rather than stand clear. To name this is already liberation — exposure drains their power.

• “I thank you for nothing in between” — this is crucial. Abuse is rarely grey: it is the stark revelation of darkness, of obscenity, of cowardice. And in that starkness, the sādhaka is forced into clarity. There is no “middle ground” to hide in.

• “Yes, I thank you for leaving” — abandonment is agony, but also the ultimate severing. What the abuser intended as punishment becomes liberation. In tantric reading, departure is the hand of Devi tearing away the last tie.

This verse is the sādhaka acknowledging the full descent into the mud. The hole, the cement, the filth, the cowardice — all of it was the underworld journey. It was not pretty, not merciful, but it was exact.

Devi here is not Lakṣmī on a lotus — She is Kālī in the cremation ground, dragging the sādhaka under until the lungs scream. And only in that suffocation does the fire awaken.

[Chorus – Reprise]

I bite down a little harder, my blade's a little sharper
My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow
Strike back a little harder, I scream a little louder
My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow
I'm stronger than I ever knew, I'm strong because of you
I hit back a little louder, fuck you a little harder
My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow

Coming right after the imagery of the hole, the cement, the sea, the mud — this chorus now sounds like someone clawing their way out of burial.

• “Bite down a little harder” — no longer just metaphorical; this is teeth against chains, jaws breaking the cement.

• “My blade’s sharper” — the cement meant to suffocate has become the sharpening stone. The wound itself forged the weapon.

• “Roots run deep into the hollow” — now the hollow isn’t just symbolic. It’s the very pit dug by betrayal. What was meant as a grave has turned into soil for resilience.

The line “I’m strong because of you” is no longer sarcastic, but paradoxically true. It acknowledges the tantric inversion: poison as medicine, betrayal as fuel, obscenity as the mirror that forced clarity.

“Fuck you a little harder” — this is not childish rebellion. It is a ritual profanity, breaking the spell of silence. In Kaula vision, obscenity has a function: it shocks the nervous system, tears through pious masks, and consecrates rage as sacred energy rather than suppressed poison.

Here, the profanity is a final spit into the face of manipulation — not to perpetuate the cycle, but to declare total autonomy.

The chorus after Verse 2 is resurrection: the sādhaka buried, entombed, pressed into mud — now exploding upward. This is not a clean, lotus-like transcendence, but a feral sprouting through cement. Roots don’t care about propriety. They crack stone and keep going.

[Bridge]

You wanna know why I like the pain you say
There’s some sick part of me thankful for the hate
I, I stay positive and I, I push forward ya see
I, I gotta do the right thing for my family
So I smile and I say that the world is just fine
As these fucking parasites eat up my spine
So I ask you once and I ask you again
Where do your roots start and where do your roots end

This is the most tantric admission of the whole song:

• “Some sick part of me thankful for the hate” — the sādhaka doesn’t deny the strange alchemy. Pain has become fuel. Hatred has become weightlifting for the soul. To call it “sick” is honesty, but in Kaula vision, it’s actually sacred — the ugra side of Shakti that feeds on poison to grow stronger.

• “I stay positive… I gotta do the right thing for my family” — here’s the dual life of a survivor. Outwardly, composure. Inwardly, parasites gnawing the spine. The sādhaka admits the dissonance: smiling on the outside, being eaten alive on the inside.

This is not hypocrisy; it’s survival. It’s the ability to play the world’s game while secretly burning through hell.

• “As these fucking parasites eat up my spine” — spine is the seat of kuṇḍalinī. To say parasites eat the spine is to say: the very axis of life-force is being drained. Abuse doesn’t just hurt the heart; it leeches vitality itself.

But the fact it’s named means it’s already being exorcised. Once brought into words, the hidden vampires lose their grip.

• “Where do your roots start and where do your roots end” — the abuser is rootless, shallow, parasitic. They consume but never grow. They have no depth, no anchor, no lineage of truth.

This is the sādhaka’s final taunt: you thought you buried me, but I grew roots. You — you have none.

The Bridge is confession and confrontation in one breath. It admits the paradox: yes, I fed on pain, yes, I wear the mask, yes, parasites tried to devour me. And yet, in that very ground, roots dug deeper.

It’s the most terrifying honesty of the path: that suffering doesn’t just wound — it initiates. That parasites make you stronger if you don’t collapse. That the smile is not denial, but a warrior’s mask while the real work happens underground.

[Final Chorus]

By now the chorus has shifted from rage into ritual. Repetition is no longer emphasis but invocation. What began as sarcasm (“thank you”) and then defiance becomes affirmation carved into bone: My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow.

Every line is a drumbeat, a stomp on the mud floor of the cremation ground. The refrain stops being about the abuser and becomes about the sādhaka’s unkillable depth.

• “Blade sharper, bite harder” — survival has forged permanent weapons.

• “Stronger than I ever knew, strong because of you” — the paradox is no longer bitter; it’s claimed. This is tantra’s ugra gratitude: even poison was prasāda when digested fully.

• “Fuck you a little harder” — profanity now becomes laughter. The curse has turned into mantra, sacred rage that no longer binds, only liberates.

[Outro]

My roots, my roots

Stripped of verses, stripped of anger, stripped of mask — only “roots” remains. The single image that survived everything: depth.

Roots don’t need light. Roots don’t need recognition. They grow where no one sees, breaking stone, drawing water from hidden places. To end here is to declare: I am anchored in the hollow you dug. What you meant as death became my life.

The finale is mantra. A sādhaka who went through the ugra curriculum — abuse, betrayal, parasites, suffocation — ends not with a sermon but with one word repeated like a bīja: roots.

This is Kaula’s deepest paradox:

• Mercy is not always tenderness.

• Grace often arrives as a scalpel.

• Abuse, when transmuted, is not just survived — it is sanctified as fuel.

And so the song closes not as entertainment, but as testimony: the sādhaka has been cut, drowned, buried — and now stands unshakable, rooted in the hollow.

The Hollow as Temple

Roots does not offer reconciliation. It does not try to make abuse “beautiful.” It names it, curses it, spits it back — and then shows what happens when you refuse to rot in the hollow.

This is why the song matters in the spiritual path.
Because the deepest betrayals — especially spiritual ones — are not random misfortunes. They are curriculum. They are the ugra mercy of Shakti: the knives that cut us free from our last illusions.

A spouse’s betrayal may shatter the heart.
A teacher’s betrayal shatters the soul.
But if you survive that level of desecration without collapsing into bitterness, something irreversible happens: your roots grow deeper than the hollow itself.

Roots is the anthem of that survivor. Not clean, not sweet, not transcendent in the polite sense — but raw, profane, undeniable. The gratitude it chants is not for kindness, but for cruelty transmuted into strength.

And this is the tantric truth:
even the most obscene betrayal, when burned through completely, becomes nourishment.
Even parasites, once named and faced, turn into manure for roots.
Even the grave, if endured without surrender to despair, becomes a womb.

So the song ends not with comfort, but with a single image:
roots, roots, roots — a mantra of unkillable depth.

This is how the sādhaka thanks even those who betrayed the soul:
not with reconciliation,
not with erasure,
but with the fierce declaration —
your knives became my roots,
and now nothing can uproot me.