About

"A work of art is worth creating if it can speak to or touch another's heart. This is what art is supposed to be all about - from and for the heart." - AnRa MaEl Background The First Pregnant Inspiration Introducing The Black Madonna - Portal to the Black Light

Background

AnRa MaEl (formerly: Barbara Getrost: Why the name change?) is the visionary founder of The Pregnant Earth, an enterprise dedicated to the re-emergence of the Feminine Principle into a revolutionary new co-creative balance alongside the healed and empowered Masculine, the birth of a new Humanity and a new Earth.
She is a self-taught artist and photographer whose work arises from Union with Divine Mystery and as much as such a thing can be spoken to, her art sings of it and to it.
She has been in receipt of an innovative transmission for healing and awakening women and men, called The Womb Blessing. It is called this because it is given from The Womb of the Great Mother.


AnRa was educated in New Zealand, at Wellington Girls College and later at Massey University, where she earned an honors degree in bioprocess engineering.
She traveled, lived, and worked extensively for many years in a variety of fields all over the world. In 1992 she immigrated to the United States where she found something she had unconsciously, restlessly been searching for all long — profoundly transformative evolutionary work. For seven years she participated in countless processes and worked closely with Saratoga and Telstar, authors of The Final Elimination of the Source of Fear, and quiet facilitators of extremely potent, earth-changing personal transformations. Eventually this empowered her to realize her heart’s calling and she was able to innovate and found The Pregnant Earth.
Alongside running a one-woman enterprise and continually creating new art, in August 2007, she also began making The Womb Blessing available to women at first and then in 2008 to men, as well.
She currently lives in Northern California, Santa Rosa with her Beloved life partner, AzRa MaEl. (formerly: Win Bertrand: Why the name change?)

The First Pregnant Inspiration

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In December, 1998 I received a visit from a very powerful muse.
I had already immigrated to the US and was living in the DC area, at the time. One evening I was doodling absent-mindedly at my desk. I must’ve drifted off because before I could realize what I had sketched, there on the page in front of me was the ecstatic form of an obviously pregnant woman. She was angelic and she was dancing!
Her presence astonished me and the purity of her beauty served to shatter every perception I’d ever held about feminine beauty and power. It was as if someone had suddenly torn the pages of glossy fashion magazines and shimmering MTV impressions right out of my brain. It was a quite a disorienting experience. I love children, but having my own had to absolutely be one of the farthest things from my heart and mind, at that time. Needless to say, I was quite perplexed.

I tried to go about my life as if nothing had happened - but everything was strangely different. My perspective had been deeply altered.
I found myself casually looking for beautiful imagery of pregnancy. I did not encounter any. I began to look a little harder - still nothing. The harder I looked the more disturbed I became. All I had found were sterile clinical diagrams in medical texts and online porn. I couldn’t believe this. In a world plastered with images of the female body, I couldn’t believe that I’d never noticed this glaring absence.
As I began to speak to people about this, I found that they hadn’t really noticed this either.
‘Well, there was Demi Moore’, they’d say.
Yes, that was a huge sensation at the time, but even this smacked of pathology to me. Women are pregnant all the time and incase nobody’s noticed, they have been all through time immemorial! It’s part of everyday life. A sacred miracle, yes, but it’s hardly anything all that rare or hard to find!

I felt there was something really dysfunctional about this picture, particularly in our supposedly more ‘liberated’ era. The sexual revolution of the 60’s were decades ago and nothing, especially to the arts, is sacrosanct anymore!
I did find that over thousands of years of art, there existed a small handful of artists (that we know of) who ventured to create pregnancy art. Each were, in our more recent history, largely ostracized and ridiculed for their inspirations and efforts. They most certainly are not known for these pieces.

It eventually dawned on me, that this deafening silence must have some sort of an impact upon the health of the Feminine psyche and indeed, upon our very Humanity and of course, also the Earth herself.
It is because I suspect that the silent consequences of this appalling omission may very well be tremendous, that I eventually managed to pluck up the courage to commit to creating only pregnancy art and art that honors the infinitude of the womb. Since a pregnancy is only possible due to Union with the Masculine, he is honored and spoken to, in form, also.

Several years later I received a clue as to the possible nature of my muse. I was flicking through an illustrated book about various Goddesses, and had found myself drawn to the chapter about the Virgin of Guadalupe. I was eagerly surprised to read that she was, by all accounts, pregnant when she appeared to the Aztec Indian, Juan Diego, on Dec. 12th 1531, in Mexico. This calendar day subsequently became her feast day. I was quite stunned when I remembered that it was in early December, when I had day-dream-doodled that first pregnant sketch, in 1998.
I had initially titled this first piece of art 'Dancing Mary', because of the time of year and because I had experienced a Holy Presence about me, around, during and sometime after making the sketch. To me she was Mother Mary pregnant with Jesus.
Later on, I changed the title to 'Holy Dancer', because I felt she is simultaneously so infinitely beyond any singular, religious identity.

Introducing The Black Madonna - Portal to the Black Light.

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I’d been painting, drawing, and photographing to create art of the pregnant form and the mother for years. I’d often felt a silent, unmistakable Presence guiding my hand and eye on a great number of occasions — yet I did not have any cognitive understanding of who or what this was.

In the fall of 2005, a series of absurd circumstances found me stranded in Germany waiting for my green card to arrive. I could not return to the United States without this.
I had a few months earlier found myself mysteriously called to attend a Black Madonna conference in Berkeley, California. I knew nothing about these very old, mystical, dark skinned icons at the time. A poem was shared at the conference, about The Black Madonna of Einselden in Switzerland. It pierced my heart and affected me so very deeply that I knew I would not be able to set foot in Europe again without visiting one of Her many shrines there!
But I had forgotten all about that as I was restlessly focused upon getting out of Europe and back home on schedule. She came to me in a dream one night — The Black Madonna. She was calling me to Her. Incidentally, Einselden, Switzerland, was only an hour and a half from my father’s house. It was Germany’s National Reunification holiday, which meant I had three days before my valuable piece of pink plastic would arrive. So off I went!

I, who rather arrogantly considered myself thoroughly exorcised of past Christian indoctrinations, sat in a freezing, stone cold, Catholic cathedral for three blissful days of profound communion. (And, there was no bread or wine involved!) Granted, this was no ordinary cathedral, for it housed the magnificent shrine of “Our Lady of Einselden.”
The first time I laid eyes on her ebony face, I was overcome with a deep sense of recognition. I just melted as found myself weeping and on my knees. (I had never voluntarily gotten on my knees for anyone or anything before in my life!) Something touched me in a place where nothing else ever had, could, or without question, ever will.
As I sat before the richly adorned icon of Her Presence, I found myself strangely able to engage in direct communication with a clarity I’d never even considered possible before. It was as though we sat face to face, chatting over a cup of tea, such was the sense of friendship, intimacy, and ease. She assisted, gave clarity, and taught me much. I asked every question I could find within me during those three days, the most paramount being: “Why am I here?” Her reply: “To break open your heart and you’re not going anywhere until we do!”
It became instantly clear to me who was behind the series of insane circumstances around my being stranded in Europe for three extra days! Indeed, She just flooded me with vast Love while I struggled to allow and receive. She informed me that, ‘She was me and that I am Her.’ I experienced Her as an infinite pulsing — the pulse of living Love — deep within the very marrow of my bones. Bones are the best ‘ground’ the Body-Temple has. She can be found at the breathing core of all things, including the womb of Gaia, deep in the heart of the Earth.

I’ve since learned that The Black Madonna is the iconic epitome of Black Light and as such offers a reliable and powerful portal for experiencing this all-encompassing quality of light that is the most powerful magic of Love possible. Black Light lies beyond whatever we know as visible light, color, form or matter, yet it includes all physical, intellectual, and spiritual light. It is the luminous light of the universal womb, the origin of life, and consciousness and is the essence of awareness itself. It is the one creative vibration of OM and it is the power to birth realities, star systems, universes, and children! It is where all things are held in potential before they are made manifest – the beginning and the end of creation where there is so much love that nothing can reflect it or refract it. There is no polarity or duality in this space. It is the dark light of sub-space, that lies beyond our senses. At this time our hearts remain the most dependable ‘instrument’ for discerning such high alchemy. It is not that Black Light is Feminine, for it is beyond differentiation, but rather that the Feminine harbors a portal directly to it via the Womb.
When the Feminine is integrated with her internal access to the power of the Black Light, she becomes completely fearless — there is only Love. Her qualities are then sometimes referred to as the Dark Feminine. She bears the sword of unitive wisdom and incorporates everything that the library of cultural and religious stereotypes regarding the passive, nurturing mother have left out. She knows no boundaries, defies all taboos, cuts through all conventions, exposes all evasions, and obeys no rules in the name of flow, radical change and liberation. She gradually removes all limitations and suffering, and is an uncompromising warrior for the truth of Love and for great Bliss. She is unapproachable by the all-too-reasonable intellect and so has laid quietly beyond the reach of every scripture and system of philosophy and yet remains eternally intimate within our being.¹
She finds other iconic representations within traditions all over the world. She is known as Kali in the Hindu tradition. The Great Mother of Buddhism, Tara, also has a black form. In Mexico a dark-skinned pregnant apparition served to heal a great rift and there she became known as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Aparecida is the black mother of the excluded and the patroness of Brazil. Palden Lhamo is the fierce protectress of Tibet. When the Dalai Lama fled the Chinese takeover of Tibet, he took only one prayer flag with him — that of Palden Lhamo. Since then, she travels with him wherever he goes. To the ancient Egyptians she was known as Isis and to the Babylonians as Ishtar. The anchoring of the triple Marys ² during the time of Christ emanated through these Middle Eastern lineages.
The energies that the embodied dark Feminine harbors and holds access to have historically been demonized by the hierarchical priesthoods within religious orders the world over. Men have feared her because this power cannot be controlled and because she unabashedly demands the raw, living truth of Love — not someone’s comfortable ideas or fanciful postulations about it! She became synonymous with the devil and all demons and so a great number of her black icons were painted white. The dragons and serpents who are emblematic of her powerful benevolent, life supporting earth energies, were vilified and the men who 'destroyed' them, effectively damming-up (and damning!) the flow at formerly sacred sites, became 'saints'. (The famous ballard about ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ is hardly evocative of evil — it actually sings of a great sadness. And what kind of ‘treasure’ were they always legendarily guarding? Surely with good reason!) And so the alchemical power and Love within Feminine sexuality was denied, closing the way to access the mysteries of Creation and to our deepest spiritual Source. We were left then, with the more prominent icon of the white Madonnas and her paling equivalents. She was held out to Humanity as an unattainable epitome of the perfectly stainless woman — pure, holy, a perfect mother, subjugated lover and doting wife, the good girl who performed well and conformed to what was expected of her.
In all actuality, the word ‘virgin’, originally meant: ‘woman unto herself’, ie: a Sovereign Being!

1. Lex Hixon, The Mother of the Universe, Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1994.
2. Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and Marie Salome. Ref: Padma Aon Prakash,The Christ Blueprint, London: Preliminary e-book published on www.ChristBlueprint.com, 2007.

© 2008 AnRa MaEl. All rights reserved.