Sanders, Alex(ander) (1926-1988)

Known as "the King of the Witches," a title he gave himself during the early years of the Gardnerian Neo-Pagan Revival in the 1960s, Alexander Sanders became the originating point for a number of witchcraft covens that in acknowledgment of his leadership called themselves Alexandrian. In light of the revelations concerning the origins of modern Wicca, few Alexandrian covens now remain.

Sanders was born in Manchester, England, the son of a music hall entertainer. According to a story he told in the 1970s, when he was seven years old he discovered his grandmother in the kitchen performing a magic ritual. She was completely naked. She confided in him that she was a witch, and she initiated the young Alex then and there. She subsequently gave him a Book of Shadows, which he copied and from which he learned his magic rites. He held a number of jobs over his young adult years and became involved in ritual magic and even Satanism. In the 1960s he formed his first coven and began to initiate people into witchcraft.

In fact, Sanders encountered one of the covens of Gerald B. Gardner in the 1960s. From it he attained an initiation into the craft and a copy of Gardner's rituals. He eventually left that coven and began his own group independently. His version of witchcraft differed little from that of Gardner and included all of his distinctives.

About this same time he met Maxine Morris, a young woman some twenty years his junior. He married her and made her his high priestess. They were discovered by the media in 1969, the same year June Johns's fictionalized biography of Sanders appeared. Over the next decade he, Maxine, and their coven were the subject of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, most frequently appearing in the nude and occasionally while engaged in symbolic sexual acts.

In 1971 Sanders and Maxine separated, and he largely retired. Interestingly, that same year, a book, What Witches Do, by Stewart Farrar, a close associate of Sanders, appeared and gave Sanders his most lasting fame as a Wiccan leader. Farrar and his wife Janet moved to Ireland where they became Wiccan leaders in their own right and together wrote a number of authoritative books on Wicca.

Sanders died April 30, 1988, from lung cancer. His movement spread around the English-speaking world during the 1970s, but following the revelations of his unacknowledged use of Gardner's rituals and his plagiarizing of material from Éliphas Lévi and Franz Bardon, most of the covens that had identified themselves as Alexandrian dropped any relationship with him.

Sources:

Farrar, Stewart. What Witches Do. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New York: Facts on File, 1989.

Johns, June. King of the Witches: The World of Alex Sanders. London, 1969. Reprint, London: Pan, 1971.

[Sanders, Alexander]. The Alex Sanders Lectures. New York: Magickal Childe Publishing, 1980. Rev. ed. 1982.