Who we are · The founders
Alex Sanders
1926–1988
Co-founder of the Alexandrian tradition, and one of the most recognisable faces of the Craft’s revival in the twentieth century. A founder and a signpost. His complexity is part of his legacy.
Early life
He was born Orrell Alexander Carter on 6 June 1926, in Tranmere, Birkenhead, the eldest of six surviving children. His father was a dance-hall entertainer whose drinking left the household unsettled, and the family’s move to Manchester not long afterwards came with a change of surname, to Sanders. Poverty and upheaval shaped his boyhood. Even so, he found his way early to esoteric study, teaching himself the Qabalah and ceremonial magic and reading Éliphas Lévi and Franz Bardon on his own initiative.
Entry into Witchcraft
For years Alex maintained that his Welsh grandmother had initiated him as a child, a story that did a great deal of work in building his public image. A family ancestry report commissioned decades later closed that door for good: the grandmother in question died in 1907, close to two decades before Alex was born. What actually happened seems far more ordinary. A woman named Pat Kopinski, previously part of Patricia Crowther’s circle, initiated him into Gardnerian Witchcraft in 1962 and let him copy out her Book of Shadows by hand, the customary way of passing on the material.
The King of the Witches
A splashy 1969 newspaper feature put Alex Sanders in front of the whole country, and June Johns’ biography King of the Witches followed the same year, with the film Legend of the Witches close behind it in 1970. Where other witches of the era kept their heads down, Alex leaned into the cameras. He had a showman’s instincts and no fear of the arguments his openness provoked.
Significance
By his own count, Alex had initiated upward of 1,600 people into some 100 covens by 1965. Opinions on him have always run hot, but there’s no serious argument against his role in putting Witchcraft in front of the English-speaking public. Whatever else is said about him, a great many people found their way to the Craft because he’d left the door standing open.
Later years
Alex and Maxine parted ways in 1971. He settled first in Sussex and later in Bexhill-on-Sea, still teaching and initiating until close to the end. He died on 30 April 1988. His notebooks and working papers survive and now form part of the historical archive.
“He came on the scene at the right time. He did more for the Craft in his flamboyance and love of the camera as a signpost. A lot of those people saw beyond the outrageousness. He opened the door.”
Maxine Sanders
Works and records
- King of the Witches, biography by June Johns (1969)
- Legend of the Witches, film (1970)
- Secret Rites, film (1971)