Alex Sanders (Wiccan)

He claimed to have been initiated by his Welsh-speaking grandmother, Mary Bibby (née Roberts), as a child, though recent research has disproven this, with Bibby dying in 1907, some 19 years before Sanders' birth.

Alex Sanders (6 June 1926 – 30 April 1988), born Orrell Alexander Carter, who went under the craft name Verbius, was an English occultist and High Priest in the modern Pagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding, and later developing with Maxine Sanders, the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca, also called Alexandrian Witchcraft, during the 1960s.

Raised in a working-class family, Alex, as a young man, began working as a medium in the local Spiritualist Churches before going on to study and practise ceremonial magic.

Born to unmarried Hannah Jane Bibby and Orrell 'Harold' Alexander Carter, Sanders was born as Orrell Alexander Carter on 6 June 1926 at 56 Church Road, Tranmere, Birkenhead, and was the eldest of six surviving children.

Sanders' father was a general labourer while his mother was a domestic servant.

Later, the family, who had been living at the home of Sanders' paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Carter (née Gandy), at 1 Moon St. Birkenhead, moved to Cornbrook Street, Old Trafford, Manchester, and unofficially changed their name to Sanders.

Around the mid 1940s, he began working for a manufacturing chemist's laboratory in Manchester.

He married a co-worker, nineteen-year-old Doreen Stretton, in 1948 when he was 22, using the name Alexander O. Sanders.

They had two children, Paul and Janice.

Sanders wanted more children but Doreen didn't; she also disapproved of the supernatural.

The marriage quickly deteriorated and Doreen took the children and left Sanders when he was 26.

According to Maxine Sanders, Sanders was grief-stricken and cursed Doreen with fertility; she remarried and had three sets of twins.

Whilst working in a pharmaceutical company, Sanders became friends with Maxine Sanders' (née Morris) mother, however, they lost contact for a while, probably due to the "intense dislike" that Maxine's father had for him (being convinced Alex was homosexual).

Throughout the 1960s, he would court publicity in the press, appearing in a number of documentaries, marrying the 20 years younger Maxine Sanders, and was elected as "King of the [Alexandrian] Witches" in 1965 as he "[was] directly descended from witches, and equipped with knowledge that outstrips [his witches]...[we formally acknowledge you] as the foremost authority on witchcraft," something that led to other prominent Gardnerian Witches, such as Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, attacking him in the press.

Sanders was unaware of his official surname of 'Carter' until he applied for a passport later in life, and only changed his name by deed poll in the 1960s.

Sanders' first contact with Wicca was in the early 1960s, through correspondence and meetings with Patricia Crowther.

According to letters she claims she received from him in 1961, he did not at that time claim to be an initiate, but felt an affinity with the occult and had experienced second sight.

In a 1962 interview, Sanders claimed to have been initiated for a year, working in a coven led by a woman from Nottingham.

This claim is corroborated by Maxine Sanders, Sanders' future wife and High Priestess.

In his book, A Coin for the Ferryman: The Death and Life of Alex Sanders, Jimahl di Fiosa (2010) also writes, "Medea later meets Alex Sanders and makes a decision to initiate him on March 9, 1962."

The exact identity of 'Medea' is still a debated topic within the Alexandrian Witchcraft and larger witchcraft community.

Having said that, it is most likely that Sanders was initiated by a woman named Pat Kopinski, who then let Sanders copy her Book of Shadows.

In September 1962, he succeeded in convincing the Manchester Evening News to run a front-page article on Wicca.

In 1963, he was initiated into Gardnerian Wicca before founding his own coven, through which he merged many aspects of ceremonial magic into Wicca.

Sanders and Arline M. Morris (Maxine) married in June in 1968 in Kensington.

In the late 1970s and 1980s and prior to his death, he went on to found and work with a ceremonial magical group known as the Ordine Della Luna.

After his divorce from Maxine, Sanders married for a third and final time to Gillian Sicka in December in 1982 in Hastings and Rother.

Several contradictory accounts exist of Sanders' initiation into Gardnerian Witchcraft, and even his own accounts are inconsistent.

One account, given in Sanders' biography, King of the Witches by June Johns, tells that Alex, visiting his Welsh grandmother unannounced, stumbled upon her performing a ritual.

Unhappy that Sanders had not knocked to make his presence known, Bibby told Sanders to take off his clothes, and that she was going to "make sure that you don't tell another living soul what you have seen this day," adding 'if you do ... I'll kill you."

Sanders died on 30 April 1988 at St. Mary's Hospital at Hastings of cancer of the bronchus with bone metastasis.

Di Fiosa (2010) notes that there are three spellings of Pat's surname: Kopinski, as used by Pat herself; Kopanski; and Kasprzynski.

Maxine also claims that all of Sanders' brothers were also psychic, saying:

"It wasn't unusual to walk into the Sanders' kitchen in broad daylight to find a full materialisation séance in progress. Mrs. Sanders would be carrying on with the chores regardless of the apparitions in attendance."

- Sanders, M.

When Sanders publicly revealed himself as a witch, however, Mrs. Sanders feigned shock and threatened a nervous breakdown.

However, this assertion that Sanders was initiated by his grandmother in any fashion has been discredited, as Wibberley (2018) states:

"These documents, prepared in 2018 and recently made publicly available through the Alexandrian Witchcraft Timeline & Archive, show beyond a doubt that the story of Alex’s childhood initiation at the hands of his maternal grandmother Mary Bibby (née Roberts) is not credible as an accurate historical account of events. Records show Mary passing away in 1907, when Alex’s own mother would have been only four years old. The report puts it succinctly: “Mary could have had no direct influence on Alex as she did not live long enough to raise her own children so that [Alex’s claims to have had interaction with her] are demonstrably false.”"

- Wibberley, C.

Gardnerian High Priestess Patricia Crowther tells a different story.