Who was Alex Sanders really?

Alex Sanders, born Orrell Alexander Carter in 1926, is one of the most famous and controversial figures in 20th-century British Wicca. Initiated into a tradition derived from Gardnerian practice in the early 1960s, he later developed a lineage with Maxine Sanders that would become known as Alexandrian Wicca. His influence stemmed as much from his ritual choices as from his ability to use the press, television, and photography to make modern witchcraft visible to an audience that had previously known almost nothing about it.

This fame created a major difficulty for his biographers: Alex Sanders played a substantial part in constructing his own legend. He claimed to have been initiated as a child by his grandmother, presented himself as the heir to a family witchcraft tradition, accepted the title “King of the Witches,” and allowed stories of healings, evocations, and magical feats to circulate. Some of these stories came from the highly romanticized biography that June Johns devoted to him in 1969. Historical research conducted since the 1990s has made it possible to distinguish a much clearer documented trajectory: birth in Birkenhead, youth in Manchester, an early interest in spiritualism and ceremonial magic, contact with Gardnerian Wicca, initiation in the early 1960s, the establishment of covens, and the rapid expansion of an Alexandrian movement.

This does not make the historical figure any less important. Sanders helped make Wicca a visible, transmissible, and international religion. His taste for spectacle earned him the hostility of several Gardnerians, but his media strategy also allowed many people to discover modern Pagan witchcraft.

Alex Sanders was born on June 6, 1926, in Birkenhead, Merseyside, under the name Orrell Alexander Carter. Genealogical records published by the Alexandrian Witchcraft Timeline & Archive confirm this birth name and show that the family later informally adopted the name Sanders after settling in Manchester.

Sanders grew up in modest circumstances. He was the eldest of several surviving children. Earlier biographical accounts give varying versions of the family situation, but modern genealogical research has clarified several points that had been obscured by his own legend.

He only learned later that his legal name was still Carter and eventually had the name Sanders formally registered by deed poll in the 1960s. This administrative detail may seem secondary, but it already illustrates a feature of his biography: his public identity was built gradually, long before he was given the title “King of the Witches.”

Manchester, Jobs, and Early Occult Interests

The family settled in Manchester, where Sanders spent much of his youth and adult life. He left school relatively early and held several jobs. At the end of the Second World War, he worked, among other things, in an industrial chemistry laboratory. This activity would give rise to later portrayals describing him as a “chemist,” a term that should be understood as referring to laboratory employment rather than an academic research career.

He was interested in spiritualism, psychic healing, tarot, and ritual magic. Several accounts describe him attending spiritualist churches and using the pseudonym Paul Dallas in some healing activities.

This period predates his documented entry into Wicca. Sanders was therefore not a man who suddenly discovered magic in 1963: he already had a longstanding curiosity about occultism and psychic phenomena.

In 1948, Alex Sanders married Doreen Stretton, a colleague he had met in Manchester's professional environment. They had two children, Paul and Janice. The couple separated a few years later. Later biographies attribute the breakup to several factors, notably Sanders's occult interests and family disagreements. The stories of curses or magical consequences attributed to the separation come primarily from family accounts and cannot be treated as independent facts.

This early family life would almost completely disappear behind the media image of the 1960s, to the point that the public would associate Sanders above all with Maxine Morris. Yet it occupies an important part of his path before Alexandrian Wicca.

The Witch Grandmother: Founding Narrative or Reality?

The most famous account of Sanders's youth appears in King of the Witches, the biography published by June Johns in 1969. Alex recounts that he caught his grandmother, Mary Bibby, naked in a magic circle when he was seven years old. She supposedly initiated him immediately, then passed on to him a Book of Shadows, divination techniques, and, later, the higher degrees of witchcraft.

This story gives him exactly what he needs in the face of his Gardnerian critics: an independent lineage predating Gerald Gardner. Later research, however, does not confirm this family initiation. Ronald Hutton showed that Sanders's ritual tradition depended directly on Gardnerian materials. The genealogical investigation published in 2018 by Christine Wibberley also examined the Sanders family without providing evidence of a structured transmission of family Wicca.

It is therefore safest to distinguish between two things. Sanders may have grown up in a family environment where folklore, divinatory practices, or healing traditions existed. By contrast, the existence of a hereditary coven that passed on to him in the 1930s a form of Wicca comparable to the one that would emerge after Gardner has not been established.

Before Wicca, Sanders presented himself as a healer in spiritualist circles. This aspect of his career is less spectacular than the photographed ceremonies of the 1960s, but it helps explain his later relationship with magic.

British spiritualism at the time had its own churches, healers, and mediums. Healing through the laying on of hands or the transmission of psychic force was practiced there without necessarily being connected to witchcraft.

In this context, Sanders developed a personal reputation as a healer and seer. Testimonies of therapeutic successes should remain testimonies: they do not constitute medical evidence. But this activity explains why healing remains a central theme in accounts surrounding his career.

Ceremonial magic, grimoires, and Éliphas Lévi

Sanders also read the major texts of ceremonial magic. He took an interest in Éliphas Lévi, Western Kabbalah, Solomonic magic, and systems of correspondences. He also studied works attributed to Abramelin and materials from the grimoire tradition. This body of knowledge gradually set his approach to Wicca apart from that of several Gardnerian groups.

The future Alexandrian tradition would retain the basic structure of initiatory Wicca - degrees, High Priestess, High Priest, circle, sabbats, esbats - but would give greater prominence to ceremonial magic, invocations, angels, the Kabbalah, and techniques inspired by Western occultism. This characteristic would later become one of the main ways of distinguishing Alexandrianism from Gardnerianism, even though the boundary between the two traditions was never completely fixed.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Sanders sought entry into Gardnerian Wicca. He contacted Patricia Crowther, who, together with her husband Arnold, led an important coven in northern England.

Relations deteriorate rapidly. Patricia Crowther is wary of his pursuit of publicity and refuses to initiate him. A series of preserved letters and testimonies makes it possible to follow this conflict.

In September 1962, Sanders received significant coverage in the Manchester press. The Manchester Evening News and then other newspapers published articles about the witchcraft activities with which he was associated. A September 1962 press clipping preserved in the Alexandrian archives already shows how closely sensationalism accompanied his public beginnings. This media coverage increased the hostility of some Gardnerians but also brought him the first contacts that would make it possible to create his own network.

The 1963 Initiation

The available documentation places Sanders's formal entry into a Gardnerian lineage at the beginning of 1963. A letter from Patricia Kopinski dated September 1963, studied by several Wiccan researchers, indicates that Alex Sanders was initiated to the first degree on March 9, 1963, in a coven led by a woman known as Medea. Sylvia Tatham received an initiation shortly afterward, while Kopinski was elevated to the second degree.

The exact identity of Medea and the details of the transmissions are still the subject of discussion in Wiccan circles. The central point, however, is clear: Sanders now possesses an initiation deriving from the Gardnerian tradition. This chronology makes the story of a completely independent hereditary Wicca unnecessary. Alexandrianism emerged as a direct continuation of Gardnerianism and then developed its own particular features.

The question of the Book of Shadows long fueled an accusation that Sanders had simply stolen or secretly copied the Gardnerian rituals. Maxine Sanders would give a different version: Alex had copied his initiator's Book of Shadows according to the normal procedure for initiatory transmission. Modern research confirms, in any case, that the Alexandrian corpus contains a very substantial Gardnerian foundation.

It should be remembered that the Gardnerian Book of Shadows itself is not an ancient grimoire. As our biographies of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente explain, it was gradually assembled from several modern sources. Sanders therefore takes up a tradition that is itself recent and evolving. He preserves much of it while adding his own material.

After his initiation, Sanders joins several groups in the Manchester area. When some organizations dissolve or change leadership, he gradually takes on the role of High Priest.

By the mid-1960s, he already has a fairly extensive network of initiates. Several covens are formed in northern England, and people from farther afield seek him out.

This growth cannot be measured precisely. The numbers announced by Sanders and those close to him - more than 1,600 initiates and over a hundred covens - were partly a communications strategy. Nevertheless, they reflect a reality: his movement quickly becomes much more visible than the small British covens that had surrounded Gardner in the 1950s.

Maxine Morris Joins the Coven

In 1964, Alex Sanders meets Arline Maxine Morris, a young woman from a Catholic family in Manchester. Maxine already knows Sanders through her mother. She is initiated into his coven and quickly becomes High Priestess. This rise is not solely due to their personal relationship. Maxine has a strong ritual presence and would play a decisive role in the transmission of the Alexandrian tradition.

The tradition should therefore not be presented as Alex’s creation alone. Maxine Sanders contributes to the training of initiates, ceremonies, coven organization, and the public dissemination of Wicca. She would remain active in the tradition long after Alex’s death.

Alex and Maxine celebrate a handfasting in 1965. The British press seizes on the ceremony and publishes reports about this “witches’ wedding.” The Alexandrian archives notably preserve an article from the Sun dated December 8, 1965, devoted to their union.

This media exposure is characteristic of their strategy. Whereas many covens avoid publicity, Alex and Maxine allow their ceremonies to be photographed and reported on. They marry in a civil ceremony in London in 1968. Their daughter Maya is born in the late 1960s and their son Victor in 1972.

“King of the Witches”

The title “King of the Witches” becomes inseparable from Sanders. Internal accounts claim that he was chosen or proclaimed by representatives of several covens. Some sources give the spectacular figure of 1,623 witches affiliated with his movement.

The figure appears in the archives and in the promotion of the film Legend of the Witches, but it should not be read as a reliable administrative census. What is certain is that Sanders fully embraces the title and understands its media value. He becomes a recognizable figure: dark hair, ritual clothing, a sword, pentacles, and staged photographs of ceremonies.

The title irritated part of the Gardnerian Wicca, which rejected any idea of a general monarchy of witchcraft. In the mid-1960s, Sanders organized several rites photographed or observed by the press at Alderley Edge and in the surrounding areas of Manchester.

The Alexandrian archives preserve numerous clippings: “White Magic,” nighttime ceremonies, ritual dances, handfastings, and photographs of covens. This media exposure fueled two opposing interpretations. For his supporters, it allowed the public to discover a real religion behind caricatures of witchcraft. For his opponents, Sanders turned initiatory rites into a spectacle.

Both interpretations contain some truth. Sanders genuinely sought to defend Wicca, but he also enjoyed theater, titles, and the press. In 1967, Alex and Maxine Sanders moved to London, into an apartment in Clanricarde Gardens, near Notting Hill Gate.

The location became one of the major centers of British Wicca in the late 1960s. Candidates came to attend classes, meet the couple, or enter the initiation process. Photographs from this period show a dense ritual environment: swords, pentacles, candlesticks, tarot, ceremonial clothing, and coven rites. Their proximity to London's cultural scene also allowed the couple to meet journalists, artists, and musicians. Wicca became visible in the London counterculture.

What is Alexandrian Wicca?

Alexandrian Wicca belongs to the family of traditional British Wicca. It shares with the Gardnerian tradition an initiatory degree system, coven work, the High Priestess and High Priest, the magic circle, esbats, and sabbats. The difference therefore does not lie in a total break with Gardner.

The Alexandrian tradition develops certain elements of ceremonial magic, Kabbalah, angelic magic, and occult techniques to a greater extent. Materials associated with Éliphas Lévi, the Golden Dawn, and other Western traditions circulate in its milieu.

The real differences also depend on the lineages. Gardnerians and Alexandrians exchanged texts, initiated one another, and produced hybrid forms. It is therefore more accurate to speak of two closely related traditions than of two separate religions.

The name of the Alexandrian tradition obviously derives from Alexander Sanders. It gradually became established in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Stewart Farrar played an important role in its dissemination. His book What Witches Do introduced the public to how Sanders' coven operated and helped give the movement a clear identity.

The term primarily serves to distinguish the lineages stemming from Alex and Maxine from those directly linked to Gerald Gardner. This distinction became all the more necessary as the two traditions spread abroad.

History has long given Alex greater visibility than Maxine. Yet Alexandrian transmission rests largely on their work together. Maxine led the rites as High Priestess, trained the women of the coven, and participated in initiations. Her presence is particularly strong in photographs and archives from the 1960s and 1970s.

After their separation, she continued her own work and retained considerable authority within the tradition. Calling Alex Sanders a "founder" remains justified, but presenting Alexandrian Wicca as the work of one man alone erases a fundamental part of its history.

The Media Coverage of 1969

The year 1969 marked the peak of his fame. June Johns published King of the Witches: The World of Alex Sanders. The book is written in a journalistic and romanticized style and largely repeats Sanders' accounts of his youth, his grandmother, and his powers.

It should therefore not be used as a modern critical biography. It nevertheless remains a crucial source on how Sanders wanted to be presented to the public. The same period saw a proliferation of interviews, photographs, and broadcasts. The title "King of the Witches" left initiatory circles and became a media brand.

The documentary film Legend of the Witches, directed by Malcolm Leigh, was released around 1970. It shows ceremonies, coven scenes, and Alex Sanders in his public role as a leader of modern witchcraft. The film belongs to its era and repeats several historical theories about the origins of witchcraft that are now outdated.

Its documentary value is nevertheless immense. The Alexandrian archives present it as the principal film preserving moving images of Sanders at the heart of his coven activities. The film further enhanced his international fame.

Journalist Stewart Farrar entered the Sanders' circle in the late 1960s. What began as journalistic work became a personal involvement in Wicca. In 1970, Janet Owen - the future Janet Farrar - was initiated by Alex and Maxine Sanders. The archives preserve several photographs of this ceremony.

Stewart Farrar was also initiated and in 1971 published What Witches Do, a book based on his direct observation of the coven. The publisher Crowood still describes this work today as a major account of the principles and rites of the Alexandrian tradition. Stewart and Janet Farrar would later become highly influential authors in English-speaking paganism and help spread forms of Wicca beyond Great Britain.

Sanders the Magician and Sanders the Showman

The stories surrounding Alex Sanders include healings, predictions, familiars, psychic phenomena, and spectacular ritual operations. Some accounts come from people who knew him and describe a charismatic, convincing man experienced in ritual. Other stories seem to have been embellished as they were retold and covered by the press, making it not always possible to know where staging ends and the magical experience as Sanders lived it begins.

This ambiguity is part of the persona. Sanders himself does not draw a clear line between religious experience, personal magic, and public theater. He may treat a rite with great seriousness and then use a joke, a staged performance, or a provocation in front of journalists.

Sanders’s persona is best understood as remaining in this tension: his accounts of supernatural powers are part of his magical identity, while his flair for theatrical presentation is equally real. Reducing one to the other would mean losing what makes the figure so distinctive.

A now-famous anecdote tells of a ritual during which Sanders supposedly staged the resurrection of a dead person in front of journalists. A participant wrapped like a corpse is placed on an altar, then an invocation is recited before the “dead person” rises.

In later versions, the magical text was supposedly a cooking recipe recited backward. This type of episode belongs to the realm where Sanders deliberately blurs ritual, humor, provocation, and spectacle. To those close to him, magic remained real; in front of journalists, he also enjoyed testing the limits of what the public was willing to believe.

The British press of the 1960s sought out extraordinary stories about witchcraft. Sanders knew exactly how to play to that demand. Sexuality has a place in initiatory British Wicca, particularly through the symbolism of the Great Rite. Depending on the tradition and circumstances, this rite may be celebrated symbolically or physically by consenting adults.

The press of the time used this aspect to portray covens as spaces of secretive and scandalous sexuality. Sanders himself was bisexual and had relationships with men and women. Maxine Sanders discussed this publicly in later interviews. However, it would be reductive to explain their marital tensions solely through this bisexuality. Family life, media exposure, coven leadership, and personal relationships became intertwined in their separation.

The Separation of Alex and Maxine

In the early 1970s, the couple's relationship deteriorated. Sources give 1972 or 1973 as the period of their actual separation. Maxine remained very active in London, while Alex gradually withdrew from the media spotlight.

Their relationship did not become a permanent war. They continued to share a common initiatory history and remained connected through their children and the tradition they had developed together. The legal divorce took place several years later.

After his period of London celebrity, Sanders settled in Sussex and adopted a more discreet life. He did not, however, stop teaching. British and foreign initiates continued to visit him.

Encyclopedia.com emphasizes that Alexandrian lineages developed in Germany, the Netherlands, and other Northern European countries through initiations and travel stemming from his network. The tradition thus became less dependent on its founder's public presence.

Sanders long presented his tradition as older or more complete than Gardnerian Wicca. Modern research has led to a reversal of this perspective. The fundamental structure of Alexandrianism derives from Gardner. Sanders's innovations are transformations, additions, and reinterpretations of an already established system.

This does not diminish his historical role. Religious traditions evolve precisely in this way: they inherit a body of material, transform it, and transmit it in a new environment. Sanders was therefore less a founder ex nihilo than the second major organizer of British Wicca after Gardner.

In the 1960s and 1970s, relations were strained. Several Gardnerians considered Sanders an opportunist who had used their material while attacking their legitimacy. Over time, this opposition lost some of its force. The lineages crossed, and some people received initiations in both traditions.

Vivianne Crowley, in particular, would later play a role in groups that combine Gardnerian and Alexandrian elements. Today, the two traditions are generally considered the two major historical branches of British Traditional Wicca.

The death of Alex Sanders

Alex Sanders died on April 30, 1988, at the age of 61. The archives of his movement preserve his death certificate along with several press articles published at the time of his funeral. The stated cause was lung cancer.

The date, on the eve of Beltane, would immediately take on symbolic significance in Wiccan accounts. However, one should avoid seeing it as proof of ritual planning. His death ended the career of the media personality, but not the Alexandrian tradition.

Some accounts indicate that Sanders wanted to see his son Victor take over the title of “King of the Witches.” This idea did not lead to authority recognized by Alexandrian Wicca as a whole. The tradition remains organized into initiatory lineages and autonomous covens.

There was therefore no centralized Alexandrian monarchy whose leader would automatically have succeeded Sanders. The title of “King of the Witches” belongs primarily to the founder’s media history.

What Alex Sanders actually contributed

His first contribution is expansion. Sanders and Maxine initiated many people and created a network of covens that quickly extended beyond Manchester and then London. His second contribution is the opening toward ceremonial magic. Alexandrian Wicca further developed tools drawn from Western Kabbalah, grimoires, and ritual magic.

His third contribution is media-related. He embraced television and the press on a scale still unknown in British Wicca. This strategy produced caricatures but also made the movement visible to thousands of people.

The question comes up in almost every biography of Sanders because several of his autobiographical accounts do not withstand verification. The family initiation by his grandmother is very probably a reconstruction. The numbers of covens and initiates announced by those around him are difficult to confirm. Several magical feats are matters of testimony or staging.

But concluding that he therefore created nothing would be equally false. Sanders did receive Wiccan initiation, lead covens, train initiates, help develop a recognizable ritual style, and contribute to the birth of an international tradition that is still alive today.

The public figure is partly manufactured; the historical influence, however, is very real. The survival of the current is largely due to the fact that it did not remain dependent on Alex Sanders.

Maxine Sanders continues the initiatory work. Stewart and Janet Farrar disseminate important literature. Other lineages are developing in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and North America. Initiates also adapt the tradition to changes in contemporary paganism while maintaining a degree-based transmission structure. Alexandrian Wicca is therefore not simply a memory of the 1960s. It constitutes one of the principal historical lineages of initiatory Wicca.

Sources and reference points

The major academic reference remains Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Oxford University Press, 1999. Hutton places Sanders within the development of British Wicca and demonstrates his system's dependence on Gardnerian material. The book is presented on Oxford Academic.

The richest archives concerning Alex and Maxine Sanders are now assembled by Alexandrian Witchcraft Timeline & Archive. They preserve birth and death certificates, press clippings, photographs, letters, coven documents, and genealogical research. This documentation makes it possible to distinguish archival facts from memories published several decades later.

June Johns's book, King of the Witches: The World of Alex Sanders, published in 1969, remains an important primary source for understanding the image Sanders presented of himself. However, it should not be treated as a critical historical biography, since it repeats many autobiographical claims that would later be challenged.

Stewart Farrar's What Witches Do, published in 1971, is the classic account of a journalist who became an initiate in Alex and Maxine's coven. The current edition from The Crowood Press still presents it as an important document on Alexandrian practice.

Finally, the photographic and film documents from the 1964-1971 period make it possible to trace the movement's public construction. The Alexandrian Witchcraft Archive notably identifies several ritual photographs as belonging to the public domain, as well as the documentary Legend of the Witches, a major visual source on Sanders and his coven.