'Over the witches' cauldron', Gillian Linscott, Liverpool Daily Post, 28 October 1969

Liverpool Daily Post, Welsh edition, Tuesday 28 October 1969, page 7. Gillian Linscott's piece for the day King of the Witches was published. It opens as a mock recruiting advertisement for witchcraft, '1969 style', then retells the book's account of Alex Sanders: initiated by his grandmother at seven after walking in on her in her Manchester kitchen; led astray at 26 by wealth and power into parties ending in devil worship; and brought back to the 'right path' after a girlfriend's suicide and… his sister's death from cancer. It closes with the book's description of Maxine, 'once a shy, devoutly catholic girl', realising at a party that she was a witch. The sister was Joan Dudley. These are the claims of June Johns's biography as the paper reports them. How to cite: Gillian Linscott, 'Over the witches' cauldron', Liverpool Daily Post (Welsh edition), 28 October 1969, p. 7. Alexandrian Witchcraft Timeline & Archive.

Over the witches’ cauldron by Gillian Linscott LONG established organisation welcomes new members. British membership of 4000, increasing rapidly. Strong overseas connections. Local group in your area. Non-political. Membership is free and open to both sexes from eighteen years old upwards. Members include clergymen, housewives, mechanics, businessmen, farmers, teachers and doctors. Advantages: congenial company, opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex with view to matrimony, help in your business or profession. Also second sight, powers of prophecy and healing, initiation in First, Second and Third Grades, nude rituals by moonlight. That’s witchcraft, 1969 style. Or at least, that’s witchcraft as expounded by Mr Alex Sanders, Britain’s leading white witch who tells nearly all in a remarkable biography entitled “King of the Witches” by Cheshire journalist June Johns published today by Peter Davies (35s). Mr Sanders is one of Britain’s remaining six hereditary witches, having been initiated by his grandmother at the age of seven, after he had rushed into her terraced house in Manchester to ask for tea and found her naked in the kitchen in the middle of a circle of witch symbols. Before he got his tea he had been initiated as a Grade One witch. The wilder kind of party At 26 years old, wealth and power had led him temporarily astray and he was holding the wilder variety of party in the silk-hung ballroom of his own house near Manchester. The evening would culminate in devil worship for favoured guests and a random collection of tramps and down and outs from the Manchester streets, including love-making on the witches’ altar by guests who really entered into the spirit of the thing. But a girl friend committed suicide and a sister died of cancer, which, for Mr Sanders, was an indication that he had been misusing his sacred powers and must hasten back to the right path - the right path being the establishment of white witchcraft as a harmless, sociable and beneficent movement. Helping him in his missionary work is his beautiful young wife, now High Priestess of his coven, once a shy, devoutly catholic girl who, in the middle of a party, suddenly became aware that she was a witch. “Then as Alex looked across at her, he saw a change come over her. She straightened up and stared at him, her mouth slightly open. Her long fair hair, which she wore piled up slipped out of its ribbon and fell about her shoulders. “Her face seemed to glow with well-being. One by one the dancing couples drew to one side and watched in amazement.” Soon she was dancing naked and leaping over the cauldron with the best of them.