Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon my Darlings.   Today is a very special post, as it marks the 1300th post here on White Rose of Avalon!   This is a big deal for me, what with my love for the number 13, especially with its connection to the Divine Feminine.   In honor of this momentous occasion, I have chosen to discuss the Demon of Fear from Charmed.   Barbas is a truly iconic villain in this long-running supernatural television series.   He is portrayed by Billy Drago, and made his first appearance on the show in the thirteenth episode of the first season, making a total of six appearances overall!   At the end of this post, I will be giving my personal ranking of his episodes.

This is the season one Book of Shadow’s entry on Barbas.   I do want to note that this original entry on Barbas was written by the Charmed Ones’ mother, Patty, and it is said to be a rare occurrence to find something she wrote in the Book!   I accessed the text of the entry here https://charmed.fandom.com/wiki/Barbas. :

“The Demon of Fear, also known as Barbas,

appears on earth once every 1300 years on a Friday

the 13th for twenty four hours. His appearance is

attributed to the universal convergence of negative

energies as derived from astrological charts. He

derives his life force by feeding off the fears of

witches. If he can kill 13 unmarried female

witches before the stroke of midnight on the 13th

he will be able to break free from his eternal

bonds and walk the earth for eternity.

A witch’s only defense is to identify and then

release her greatest fears. Do not rely on your

wicca powers for defence, for in the face of your

greatest fear, those powers are paralyzed.

To let go of your fear, trust in the greatest

of all powers.

Thanks for letting them into your heart.”

So, this gives the overview of not only who Barbas is, but how his powers work.  As he uses the witch’s greatest fears against her, the only way to truly defeat Barbas and live another day is to conquer your fears as he tries to use them against you!   This is how he is thwarted time and again by the Charmed Ones.   They become sort of experts at conquering their own fears as the years go on.   Barbas later acquired the unique ability to make himself invisible to whisper fearful thoughts into his victim’s ears.   That particular gift was useful when he was stuck trapped in the Underworld.   This is a form of mental torture that helps make the victim more vulnerable to being scared to death!

Clearly, the use of the number thirteen to be associated with Barbas is aligned with the fact that the number is often misunderstood as being unlucky.   I find it very interesting that they chose to make the Demon of Fear, so tied to Friday the 13th, male, as 13 and Friday the 13th are Sacred to the Divine Feminine.   In fact, the reason the number is often seen as unlucky is that when Christianity began to spread the Church did not want anything associated with the Divine Feminine to be seen in a positive light!   I suppose we can chalk this up to the fact that the show still wanted Friday the 13th to be scary rather than explaining how it was originally a Divine Feminine day.   I cannot truly complain that the Charmed Ones did not celebrate it for the Divine Feminine, since if they did we never would have got Barbas as a character!

Now that I have gone over a bit of Barbas’s backstory, let’s get onto my ranking of the six episodes he appeared in over the eight-season run of the series!

Number 6: Crimes & Witch Demeanors Season 6 Episode 19

~In last place I have the nineteenth episode of season six.    Now, to be clear, I do still like this episode in many ways, as it is very important.   This is where the Charmed Ones are put on trial to see if they are worthy of keeping their magic.    Barbas works as the lawyer arguing against them, and it is very entertaining to watch him so obviously use his own grudge against the sisters to try and get their powers taken away!    The main reason this episode is important is that this is where Pheobe gets her active powers taken away due to her misuse of them.   While Pheobe is my favorite character, I am the first to say that she had been abusing her powers and needed this wake-up call!

Number 5: A Call to Arms Season 7 Episode 1

~In fifth place, I have the final appearance of Barbas.   This is an interesting episode, as we get to see Leo fully give into his own darkness as he hunts down Barbas desiring to kill him for the role he played in helping Gideon try to kill Wyatt and resulting in future Chris’s death!   I love this episode for finally giving us as an audience some level of character development for the normally goody-goody Leo.

Number 4: From Fear to Eternity Season 1 Episode 13

~In fourth place, I have the first-ever appearance of Barbas.    This is the episode where we learn that he is the Demon of Fear, capable of using a person’s worst fears to scare them to death!   This is a tried and true way to kill someone, often found in the supernatural horror genre.   Barbas is said in this episode to only appear once every 1300 years on Friday the 13th where he will try to free himself by killing 13 witches by midnight.   Of course, he figures out a way to circumvent that rule as he goes toe to toe with the Charmed Ones time and again!    He almost killed Prue and Phoebe in this episode, as he read that Prue’s greatest fear was water and Phoebe’s greatest fear was losing a sister, thinking that he would get two for one.   Of course, he was thwarted and sent back to the Underworld to wait. 

Number 3: It’s a Bad, Bad, Bad World Parts 1 & 2 Season 6 Episodes 22 & 23

~In third place, I have the double-episode finale of season six, which is usually aired as one episode and appears as one on streaming services and on the physical media releases, hence my counting it as one.    This episode gets major bonus points for not only featuring Barbas as the Demon of Fear but also as the Demon of Hope in the Evil version of the World!   This is an absolutely hilarious sequence in an episode that has some very rough plotlines. 

Number 2: Ms. Hellfire Season 2 Episode 9

~In second place, I have the ninth episode of season two.   This is where Barbas had hired a criminal to enlist an assassin to kill the thirteen witches he needed to kill in order to be free to live on Earth.   Prue pretended to be the assassin while Phoebe and Piper went about babysitting one of the potential dead witches.   It is such a fun episode overall, and great to see Prue loosen up a bit!

Number 1: Sympathy for the Demon Season 5 Episode 7 

~No other episode could have been my number one!   Season five episode seven is one of my favorites of that season, and honestly one of my favorites of the series.   This is the episode that features my two favorite Demons of the series at the same time, Cole Turner (aka formerly Balthazar, aka former Source of All Evil) and Barbas!   Of course, Cole has always been my absolute favorite, but Barbas is a close second.   The episode centers around Barbas trapping the Charmed Ones in the Manor, where they need to face their own fears until they defeat him once again.   This is the episode that revealed that although Phoebe had already conquered her previous worst fear, as she had lost a sister by then, she had a new worst fear, that she was evil!   In fact, it also served to show that Phoebe and Cole shared the same worst fear, as his worst fear was also that he was evil.   This led to a lot of personal pain and drama during the course of the episode.   Barbas is at his most diabolical and entertaining Demon energy here!

~I hope you have enjoyed this post about the famed Demon of Fear.   What is your favorite Barbas episode?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!   

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is Barbas using his powers of invading people’s minds on Phoebe.   I found the image on http://unwelcomecommentary.blogspot.com/2011/12/charmed-sympathy-for-demon-57.html.

LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: https://patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Tarot Note: I have a page offering tarot and oracle readings for those interested in these services!    I am very happy to be offering these readings to my treasured readers at White Rose of Avalon!  Link to page: https://whiteroseofavalon.life/tarot-and-oracle-readings/  

Further Watching 

• Charmed (1998)