My Mother, The Spider

Hey, I'm Bea. My journey started in the womb, and I must have liked it there cos I came out two weeks late — much to the irritation of my mother.

Ah my mother, a complicated woman. Around the age she started to bleed, she lost her father, and through the perverted logic only a child fathom was filled with guilt and shame.

As a coping strategy for these ugly feelings she developed covert, or vulnerable, narcissism. And if you don’t know what that means, instead of loudly boasting about herself and her accomplishments she often feigned helplessness and played the victim to get her way.

Louise Bougeois, Maman 1999

"The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver...Like spiders, my mother was very clever...Spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother."

— Louise Bougeios

There isn’t room here to detail all the ways this manifested in our family life, suffice to say that my singular willingness within my family to stand against her manipulating limbs, weaving the world around us, set me up for failure.

It took me years to realise how deep her pincers had skewered their way into my soul, penetrating my sense of self. Looking through my Mother’s Mirror would have had me believe the worst of myself.

Gradually, I extracted myself from her projections patterning my psyche, unravelling these threads, finding and cauterizing their entry points.

Becoming Spider

Bea Star
Soul Embodiment Guide, Psychospiritual Mentor & Transformational Coach

Spiders were not well-liked in my family, their long spindly legs, unpredictable movement, and uncanny ability to relocate on a whim and make their home anywhere made them eerie and threatening.

During holidays we would visit a place we affectionately called Spider House. It was not possible for us to settle into our stays there until the ceremonial spider hunt had taken place, vacuum cleaner in hand, to rid the house of these creepy bedfellows so we could begin to rest in safety and peace—though this rarely lasted long!

I escaped the clutches of my narcissistic mother by moving for university to study Psychology, where I quickly discovered that it did not matter how much psychology I knew, my behavioural patterning could not be escaped so easily.

It did not matter how much I searched for a place to belong, I could not find people or places that felt like home, or at least not ones that seemed to share my affection. I tried everything—self-help, political theory, therapy, mindfulness—nothing worked.

Brought up as an atheist, stepping onto the path of spirituality was no small task. And when I finally did, Spider was one of the first animal spirits which began to accompany me on my journey.

By that point I had enough interest in sacred reverence for spirit beings that, however much they freaked me out, I was able to appreciate Spider’s appearance in my world. We eventually became firm friends, weaving worlds and worldliness together.

It took some time, as Spider medicine does, for the truth to unravel, for me to go from helpless fly tangled in its web to weaving my own—or maybe just to bring these two parts of myself together, to unearth the depths of the power I had been reluctant to claim.

Developing a spiritual and magical practice touched the pain that nothing else could and showed me the way to be held within Mother Nature’s vast interconnected web of wonders.

My approach draws from my academic work as a lived experience researcher of decolonial mental health paradigms at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, as well as studies in psychology and soulcraft, including depth and archetypal psychology, and integrative transpersonal psychology, supported by training with prestigious psychotherapeutic teaching centres The Psychosynthesis Trust, and Re-Vision, among others.

My work continues to deepen as I do, following further envelopment within the mysteries of life and Nature herself. My seven years of studies in ancient mystic philosophies and alchemy, include hellenistic, vedic, daoist, hermetic, and gnostic teachings and have been supported via Adam Elenbaas’ teaching of comparative astrology at Nightlight Astrology, as well as Gnosis Samael Lakshmi UK, among others.

My work is also informed by my own daily devotional practice and deep self-study, and is rooted in the wisdom and teaching of Elders with their own lineages in the ritual and healing arts. My personal devotional spiritual practice is an eclectic mix of European folk tradition, goddess worship and Spiritism. I am also guided by my own spiritual mentor in my faith tradition. The genre of somatics and embodiment is woven throughout the different avenues of study and practice I pursue. I have a daily yoga and meditation practice, and an intimate relationship with my own embodied being.

I have learned cross-cultural approaches to ancestral reverence and dreamwork, as well as decolonial abundance and manifestation from Luisah Teish. I studied ancestral healing techniques with Cali White of The Witches’ House of Healing Arts, with a focus on the Burning Times and the Witch Wound. I have also received womb-centric shamanic training through The Sacred Trust, and was introduced to sacred practices of nature reverence by Suzi Steer of Tree Sisters.

My work has been shaped by lineages of work on feminist epistemologies, intersectionality, whiteness, and white body supremacy some of which was shared with me by Marika Heinrichs of Embodied Ancestral Inquiry, and Miche Fabre-Lewin of Living Justice. My worldview was grown through the mud of emergent experiences in grassroots mutual aid and community accountability.

My approach is further enriched through reading works of literary companions. Among these teachers, I include: Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Tyson Yunkaporta, Sharon Salzburg, Demetra George, Peter Levine, Marion Woodman, Thomas Moore, James Hillman, Carl Jung, Jennifer Mullan, Silvia Federici, bell hooks, adriene mari brown, Patricia Hill Collins, Sara Ahmed, and Audre Lorde.

Influences

Professional Qualifications

BSc. Psychology, University of Birmingham, First Class (Hons)
Ancient Hellenistic Astrology Year 1, Nightlight Astrology
Foundations in Core Coaching & Mentoring Skills, Wise Goose Coaching & Mentoring
Trauma-Informed Circle Facilitation, Consent Collective
Introduction to Way of Council Facilitation, True Circles
Loosening the Warp of Whiteness, 25 hours CPD hosted by Karuna Dartmoor

Areas of Interest
& Specialities

Intergenerational Trauma, Inherited Patterns, Generational Curses & Ancestral Healing
Inner Child Healing
Mother/Father Wound
Witch Wound & Internalised Misogyny
Systemic Oppression & Cultural Conditioning
Neurodivergence
The Imaginal Wound & Madness
Primal Wound of Separation

Jane

"Working with Bea was magical and practical, and fun! I was suggested tools and ideas that worked for me from a wide range of practices. I felt supported and listened to and the whole approach felt holistic."

Katrina

"Bea is an extremely effective listener. Bea has a gift for distilling the essence of my issues into concise summaries which adds to my understanding and focus. I never felt rushed but we always seemed to get to the end and I walk away with a plan."

Sammy

"Bea, working with you opened my eyes to see my dilemma in a completely different light. Our session pulled at lots of threads that had been bugging me and so that I made peace with an thorny ethical issue with a friend that plugged a missing piece in how I relate to the world and political life. Thank you."

Client Love

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