Who I am - Paul Barbary Pagan Witch and Ceremonial Magician

I am an ancient pagan magician and witch! LOL!

Born in 1968... In the dodgy part of East London in England, where tourists dare not tread!

I became fascinated with all things paranormal and unexplained as a young child! There used to be a monthly collectable magazine called "The Unexplained" that i read avidly and used my newspaper round money to buy every week, back when newspaper rounds and magazines were a thing! That's how old I am! I predate the internet and amazon!

I guess I became pagan as a child. I left Christianity at age nine when our evangelical Sunday school pastor and teacher tried to convince me that the world was 6000 years old and dinosaurs were the lies of satanic scientists. It was the end of innocence as I realized that some adults are morons and liars. Around the same time my parents took me to gorgeous Cornwall, the Celtic south west of England, where the old stone circles and standing stones are. They took me up on the high lonely moors to a famous stone circle. I COULD FEEL IT! My hair stood on end and I was never the same again. I guess I became pagan before I knew exactly what that even meant. Land, sea and sky and the old places became my church. We lived in the country, in the County of Kent and I lived every spare moment in the woods and wild places. My favorite stone circle, what I refer to as my "spiritual home" is the wonderful Nine Sisters on the high Penwith moors near the village of Modron, named after the Celtic Pagan Goddess Madron.

Here it is in a picture I took one solstice morning at sunrise,,

I made my own set of Tarot Cards when I was eleven years old. Witchcraft and pagan shops were hard to find back in the 1970's and Amazon was decades in the future... My father worked for the famous Lloyds Of London, in those days computers were room sized mainframes and run on paper cards before Computer disks were invented! My father was a computer operator and used to bring me home the "Punch Cards" to draw on... So I hand drew all 78 cards from pictures of the Rider Waite Tarot Deck from a book! I am not an artist and they were awful! I am not and have never been able to draw... But they were MINE! I loved them anyway, learned to use them and kept them wrapped in a silk handkerchief. I even did readings at school for school fairs!

I discovered the Black Magick novels of Denis Wheatley at the same age and binge read the whole lot. His hero was The Duke De Richleaux, a white magician who did battle with black magicians... Every novel he would talk about the Infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. I think Crowley was supposed to be a cautionary tale... BUT I LOVED THE SOUND OF HIM!! And adored his famous charge to "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law".

Thus began my love for magick, witchcraft and the occult! We had a tiny library in the country village where I grew up which had a tiny occult section. I borrowed Grimoires such as The Black Pullet, and herbalism tomes. I learned everything I could and started my own "Occult Club" at school! We made black candles and performed rituals as best as we could by using Denis Wheatley's books as a guide.

After I left school I followed my father and started a career in computers. I became a pretty good programmer in the 1980's when EVERYBODY wanted programmers and I prospered, got really into my mundane career, met my future first wife, had a daughter and did life stuff.

In my late 20's I realized my spiritual side was missing. So I took my wife to Cornwall to the pagan stone circles... And we stopped on the way back to London at Glastonbury, the worlds largest pagan and witchcraft community. In Glastonbury I was amazed that now witchcraft was so mainstream! There were a huge number of pagan stores, people walking around in pagan and witchy clothes, talking about their covens and spell craft. I was enchanted and dived right back into my witchcraft and occult practice and studies!

I practiced wicca and witchcraft and was also amazed to discover that Aleister Crowley's magickal group - the OTO - was still running and operating. So I joined the OTO, an initiatory club for ceremonial magicians and occultists.

My first wife died of cancer. I joined a pagan dating web site and met my "forever wife" aka wifey, the amazing Pat (who has her own "Who I am" blog you can read.) Pat initiated me in her Alexandrian wicca lineage up to the 3rd degree and I became the high priest of her Moonfire coven. Pat also joined the OTO and together we founded the Serpent Flame OTO body for southwest Michigan.

My "real" initiation came later... Although I love wicca, witchcraft, the high occult and ceremonial magick... I realized that my real love was in the old actual traditional witchcraft practices of my native England and especially Cornwall. So I studied and practiced that path. In doing so I learned of Burns Down, a huge steep hill on the high moors above the ancient pagan village of Zennor... Where witches would gather at the summer solstice and burn torches and bonfires, hence the name "Burns Down" (Down is old English for a hill). Locals and farmers still to this day will not go up to the Witch Rocks after dark. At the very top of the hill are huge square granite rocks called "the witch rocks". I read that the ancient initiation ritual was to approach the rocks at midnight at Beltane, bowing every third step, then walk around the rocks three times backwards bowing every third step. Then to climb the rock naked and put a hand on your head and the other under the feet and proclaim "everything between my hands belongs to the horned god!". Then you wait "for a sign" that you have been accepted. You then leave the rock, circling and bowing as before. Pat and I visited at Beltane and on Beltane night I hiked the two miles up the steep hill. I performed the ritual. It was freezing. I lay on top of the Witch Rock naked in the shape of a pentacle and waited. After 20 minutes I saw a shooting star that wen directly over me from between the feet to over my head. I thought "That is as good a sign as any" and finished the ritual. But on the way home it got weird. I felt "watched" like I have never felt before. Like something huge, powerful and ancient was watching me. I became increasingly awestuck and afraid,,, I will admit I pretty much sprinted the whole way home to Zennor. Pat says she will always remember how agitaged and cold I was when I got back at 2am on Beltane morning, I was shivering with cold and fear. A few years later I read in Gemma Gary's amazing book "The Devils Dozen", where she describes the initation ritual I used above, in it she says that the "sign" of being accepted is a strong sense of being watched!!! So I guess that WAS the sign, not the shooting star! The pic below is from the day before my ordeal when Pat and I climbed Burns Down by day. I am pointing at the Witch Rocks!

Another pic of Burns Down towering above the coastal village of Zennor with its famous Mermaid Legend... The white bushes are the infamous Blackthorn sacred to the Queen Of The Fey!

I retired from my IT career at 47 and Pat wanted to start a witchcraft store. I proclaimed her to be a mad woman... But she said it was her dream to own a witchcraft supplies store. So I said... "Well then, we had better make it as big and as specialized as possible, as good as the famous witchcraft supply stores in Glastonbury"... And so Artes And Craft was born in 2016. We are now considered to be one of the best wicca and witchcraft supply stores in the Midwest and one of the best witchcraft stores in the USA!

Before I retired I learned to Blacksmith. I got a month of lessons under a world class blacksmith based in Ann Arbor in Michigan... Although I am crap at 2D art... I could always carve well and had already been making wood wands for years for friends... So being a pagan blacksmith was a natural extension. My work has become so popular that I have collectors, and many other smiths copy my designs, and folks buy my witchcraft ritual tools from all over the world!

You can purchase my hand forged witchcraft tools, wicca wands, bolines for herbalism and more here... Traditional Witchcraft and Wicca Ritual Tools

And my hand forged pagan, Druid and heathen Jewelry here.. Pagan Jewelry