Alex Sanders: The King of the Witches

by Wil Kinghan
It might be said that a lot has been written about Alex Sanders but I have found this not to be the case hence this essay. It seems like Alex has been relegated to the sidelines of magical history these days, extraordinary when he and Maxine Sanders have had such a profound influence on the development of modern pagan witchcraft. Much of what is written and available is repetitive and only a few books refer to him. Alex himself, unlike other leaders of Wicca, did not publish. The books available are the autobiography by June Johns, King of the Witches, Stewart Farrars What Witches Do, The Alex Sanders Lectures and various references by Patricia Crowther and other authors. Alex Sanders early life is mysterious, it has been treated extensively by June Johns1 although some of it is undoubtedly fictional. Alex didnt help matters by making a bonfire of all his papers in later years, some fragments survived though, which are in the possession of Maxine Sanders. He was born Orrell Alexander Carter in Birkenhead on the 6 June 1926, the son of Harold, a musician, and Hannah Carter. His Welsh grandmother, Mrs. Bibby, was an early influence of Alex which has been confirmed by Maxine Sanders2. She was a cunning woman and medium and she gave him an early interest in the occult. In fact the family was rather strange as his mother was also a medium as was Alex and all his brothers too. In the course of things the young Alex Sanders (he later changed his surname to Sanders by deed poll) became quite well known for it in Manchester and indeed, trance mediumship was a skill that would never leave even in his last years when he received many communications from celestial sources. Although exaggerated, much of what is known about these early years comes from June Johns autobiography. Here he is portrayed being sent to the country as a child and having Kiplingesque encounters with ghostly ancestral witches on lonely hilltops, but perhaps the best known tale is that of his initiation into the witch cult. "He was initiated by his grandmother when he was seven years old, after he interrupted one of her solitary rituals. Neither Alex nor the family had any idea she was a witch, but she gave him no time to brood. She had the clothes off him, initiated him on the spot, and told him that he was now a witch too and that various dreadful things would happen if he betrayed the secret" (Farrar: 1971). This story has always been looked at askance by sceptics, and there really isnt much chance of it being true, however, as with much of Alexs life, there is a strong foundation to the story and here perhaps we see some of the quality that the founders of modern witchcraft share in common, the will to confuse as Robert Cochrane called it "his grey magic" (referring to himself). As mentioned above, his grandmother Mrs. Bibby was indeed a cunning woman from the foothills of Snowdonia3. Not quite a witch as there was a distinct difference between cunning craft and witchcraft as Alex described it, traditionally witchcraft was malefic. The initiation story is probably an elaboration of Mrs. Bibbys influence on him which (along with his mother) introduced him to the occult and spiritualism. Also Alex claimed in 1961 that his grandmother told him of a witch ancestress in the family4, this was before the initiation story appeared, but perhaps it is spiritual truth that he is describing here. His assertion that his book of shadows was given to him by his grandmother is therefore also certainly false, it is basically a Gardnerian one with some differences and some of the prose sections missing. Sanders gave a very vivid account of his early manhood in "King of the Witches" with accounts of his falling into the ways of the left-hand path when he was adopted by a wealthy childless couple and used his new-found fortune to immerse himself in a life of hedonistic orgies dedicated to the dark powers. He called this his "black magic phase" According to "King of the Witches" he rescued himself from this by undergoing the long exhaustive ritual of purification in the magical system of Abramelin in order to purge himself of his excesses and emerged seemingly ready for his new career. This set of events again has some shreds of truth to them. He says the book from which he performed the ritual of Abramelin was from the library in which he worked at the time and he describes getting caught and losing his job over it.

This actually happened but in the context of a ritual staged to "get Wicca onto the front page of his local newspaper",5 an idea which backfired on him and got him into trouble with Patricia Crowther whom he had approached for initiation in 1961, she says: "On that occasion Sanders boasted to us that he could make the front page of the Manchester Evening Chronicle and News any time he liked. We were immediately on our guard, and I pointed out that anyone could achieve that doubtful privileged if they were prepared to perform a stunt of a sensational nature. However, true to his word, what was to be the first of many witchcraft exposes, appeared on the front page of that newspaper on 15 September 1962, with the headline Amazing Black Magic Rites on Cheshire Hillside. Dead man comes to life, joins witches (Crowther: 1998). The event was staged at Alderley Edge and was not Wiccan at all but based instead on a rite from the Egyptian Book of the Dead6. The book Alex had borrowed was the Key of Solomon and some of its symbols were used to decorate the robes. In a sense some of these escapades were like the boyhood deeds of a hero before he emerges onto the stage of history- they are just as shrouded in myth. Many other stories are recounted in King of the Witches such as the claim that Alex met Crowley in his youth for instance but these are all unverifiable. It would also be a mistake to take all this clownishness for ignorance, Alex Sanders was anything but. He was an accomplished Magus as those who worked with him testify and although he mixed Ritual Magic with Wicca this was perfectly in keeping with his practical approach. His media antics antagonised the Gardnarian community however, who felt he was bringing Wicca into disrepute and criticism focussed on his pedigree, in particular his initiation. Alex Sanders maintained that he was initiated by his grandmother, and in this he may be telling the spiritual truth, but he certainly desired to be initiated into the Gardnarian cult. He corresponded with both Gardner and the Crowthers and met up with Patricia Crowther as a prospective initiate. She took a dislike to him almost immediately and when he attended a sance with them he was "soon standing up and waving his arms about"7, which didnt endear him to them. What this shows is either a profound lack of smarts by Sanders or a genuine possession Such a performance might easily be taken as an attempt to show off by someone desperate to be initiated, but might also have been genuine but misinterpreted, after all, he was a trance medium long before he was involved with witchcraft. One other thing did not help his case though, at the ritual he had organised he had used two of Arnold Crowthers paintings without permission as backdrops and this angered the Crowthers even more. As far as the tangled story can be unravelled, it seems possible that Sanders was initiated by a priestess known only as Medea who ran a coven in Derbyshire. He apparently met her through Pat Kopanski, an initiate of the first degree in the Crowthers coven. She had left the Crowthers because of disagreements and had found a place in the Derbyshire coven. She proposed Sanders for initiation which was carried out with Kopanski herself being given the second degree soon after, thereby allowing her to form her own coven according to the Gardnarian rule. This she did, but the Derbyshire coven broke up suddenly due to the death of Medeas husband possibly its high priest and this left Sanders and Kopanski without the Rituals. They were effectively isolated as they could not approach the Crowthers either because of hostilities. All of this is possible but one problem remains, since no Medea has ever surfaced no one knows who she is or who initiated her and so her relationship to Gardner cannot be established. Patricia Crowther suggest that she actually died before Sanders initiation (9 March 1963) however there is no evidence of that Medea being the same one. The third supposed member of the Kopanski coven might be able to throw some light on this, but so far nothing has come up. As a curious footnote, June Johns mentions the fact that Sanders claimed his grandmothers witch name was Medea, one in the same? If so then we are back where we started, and such is the tangle of the grey magic Sanders weaves around himself. So how did Alex get the Book of Shadows? The Alexandrian BOS has differences from the Gardnarian one and is shorter, it has been suggested that it is an earlier form of the book, although it does not fully match any of the versions researched by Aiden Kelley from Gardners papers. The Crowthers have claimed in turn that it is a version peculiar to their coven8. Yet another story claims it was one of Gardners from the Isle of Man and was given to Alex by a third party, no one really knows. Certain differences in the Alexandrian book do exist, one of the most obvious being the name of the God which is given as Karnayna. My initiator maintained that it was possibly a truer or older name than Cernunnos, others that Sanders only heard the name in ritual and wrote it down phonetically. Ronald Hutton has put forward the intriguing idea that it is in fact derived from the works of Margaret Murray9 where it is related to the Arabic for the horned one, Dhul Karnain. This is made even more interesting because of the fact that it is used in the Koran as a name for Alexander the Great which, as Hutton puts it: "would have made a pleasing pun for Alex." Whether true or not, that derivation would put it nearer the

pedigree claimed for the traditional Luciferian craft which, with its middle eastern influences and medieval modes of sorcery might be a fitting ancestor for Alexandrianism if it didnt all sprout from Gardnarian roots. Other differences include the numerology of the scourge and differences in some of the consecrations of the working tools. Also much of the longer instructional prose passages are missing (in my copy at any rate!) giving a more compact and practically orientated work. There is also a peculiar passage on the rule or law. Given the Sanders more ritual magic and practical approach, he may well have eliminated pieces of the book that he felt were more old religion and less practical Alexandrianism was certainly distinguished by that measure. But again, there is no proof of this. It was when Alex met Maxine Morris that things really took off - he had been effectively rejected by the Gardnarian community but was now poised to set up his own. Maxine herself seems to have been a natural witch and claimed herself to be an initiate of a form of Egyptian magic before she met Alex. Alex and Maxine together were a powerful catalyst for the jump from outsiders to King and Queen of witches. This process was partly aided by publicity, this time positive. Again the focus was a ceremony at Alderly Edge, this time a Wiccan one and the coverage by the local press was sympathetic and spawned follow on articles with a resultant flow of initiates. What followed is generally well known with the rise of Alex and Maxine to the status of media figures, Maxine even had the dubious honour of being stoned by neighbours when it came out that she was a witch. Another factor that may have helped in their success was, as Alex maintained, the seeming indifference of Gardnarian covens of the time. Alex was approachable and prepared to take on initiates, those he referred to Gardnerians if he had no space for them were frequently sent back. He often complained that he would get calls from Garnerians saying, "we dont want these people." He believed that Garnerianism was cosy and content to stay as it was without training new people up. While some of this reticence may have been due to a stricter quality control, Alex adhered to the dictum that the knowledge was for all. This would have had some spectacular failures but also great successes such as the Farrars. At the very least he changed many lives for the better by exposing them to new challenging ideas, whether they stayed with Wicca or not. It is a very interesting thing that, at the moment Alexandrianism became something distinct, two leaders of Gardnerianism acted as midwife. This came about because the success of the Sanders started to antagonise traditional Gardnerians who felt that the media antics brought the craft into disrepute. In fact, Alex was a master at playing the media at their own game and, rather like the fool of the tarot behaved in an almost childlike way. He did work hard though to put across a positive view of the old religion which gets lost beneath the publicity stunts. However, in May 1966, Pat Crowther and Ray Bone denounced Alex Sanders as an impostor. This rebounded on them in an unexpected way as it begged the response from Alex that he represented the old persuasion as he had been initiated by his grandmother. At this point then, Alexandrianism broke away from Gardnerianism and became a separate tradition. The most audacious of Alexs exploits was surely his election as king of the witches. The Sanders claimed at this time that their initiates numbered around 1,623 witches10. This really antagonised the Gardnarian witches, perhaps because of his apparent success, as Stewart Farrar put it: "his title King of the Witches, which is easily dealt with, because the title was given to him unasked by a gathering of sixteen of his own covens, and he never claims to be king of anything but his own witches11." Another facet of Alex Sanders was that he was sometimes disparagingly referred to as: "Sanders isnt a witch, hes a magician". Stewart Farrar adds: "Sanders is a witch and a magician". He apparently regarded the three degrees of Wicca as the same as the first three degrees of occult initiation and saw himself and Wicca in this broader context which, as Stewart goes on to say, effectively unsettled his critics whos horizons may not have been as broad. Certainly Ritual and the study of traditional Magick such as the Kaballah is an important part of Alexandrianism and it allowed more crossing of religious boundaries in the tradition of the magical societies and their more neo-platonic ideas of 2all Gods are One God. Such ideas are now part of mainstream paganism. Sanders would even work with the Christ figure as a Sun God, and this is interestingly revealed in a conversation between Stewart Farrar and Alex about the creation of a spirit entity called Michael in "What Witches Do".

During their heyday Alex and Maxine moved to London, which is where the Farrars met them. Stewart had been asked by the editor of the newspaper he worked for, called Reveille, to do a feature on them as they had been technical advisors on a new film Legends of the Witches and he felt "there might be a story". Stewart went along and met a "slim, balding man in his early forties, wearing dark glasses and answering questions in a soft northern voice". He asked for an interview, got one, and wrote the article. Afterwards Alex told Stewart that the publishers of King of the Witches were looking for a companion volume on the situation now. Would he be interested in writing it? He not only wrote the book but became an initiate and one of the Crafts foremost writers. Thus began the career of Stewart Farrar and the book, What Witches Do, became a classic doing as much to preserve and enhance Alexs reputation as anything else. The book reveals a wry, humorous and intelligent man with great energy and magical ability and a knack for teaching but not without his faults. His media antics are shown in the light of a sincere wish to bring Wicca to the attention of the public and to get as many people interested as possible who would otherwise never hear of it. Of course some of his plans were a bit on the flaky side such as the travelling roadshow he developed that featured a play about a sorcerer who summons the Goddess. This travelled up and down the country playing in community halls and the like and attracted a lot of attention, as much for the shock value as anything constructive about Wicca. Although ill-conceived the intention seems to have been good, to allow people to learn about the old religion. As with so much of what Sanders tried to do however, it came across the wrong way. Soon after the Farrars left to form their own coven in 1971 Alex and Maxine separated. Alex moved to Sussex and then to Bexhill. Maxine stayed in London and remained part of the Occult and Wiccan community whereas Alex chose to eschew media attention. In this phase his career took on a more Christian outlook, in the sense of Christian-based magic rather than a religious one. This has been confirmed to me by one of my initiators who visited him in Bexhill in the early eighties and was allowed read and copy material in some of his notebooks. Knowledge of this time is sketchy but Derek Taylor, who Alex allegedly started to work with in the sixties, started to work with him on a stellar based system of Wicca and magic involving much trance work once more returning Alex to his roots as a medium. According to Taylor they worked in an almost Dee and Kellyish kind of way with Alex establishing contact with celestial intelligences and the demiurge suggesting a Gnostic spirituality and hence the Christian influence.

According to Taylor, this work was undertaken as a counter to the very Earth focused nature of Wicca which, they felt, was losing touch with the balancing celestial forces beyond the body of the planet. That Alex was working as a medium in the eighties is confirmed by Vivienne Crowley who recounts a trance session working with the Goddess Sekmet in 1986. A tape exists of this working and can be obtained from Derek Taylor at www.hexagonarchive.com. Some of this material is questioned however by Maxine Sanders who considers that it may have been from a time when Alex was under the influence of medication. Alex Sanders death was as strange as his life. He died on the morning of April 30 1988 (beltain eve) aged 61 and suffering from lung cancer. His motto was, among other things, "let those who have ears, let them hear". A fitting motto for a man who suffered at the hands of the media that he courted like a bullfighter. A moving account was written of this death by Vivienne Crowley, and is included as a companion article to this piece. Wil Kinghan 2001