Alex Sanders (Wiccan)

Orrel Alexander Sanders
Alex Sanders, in full ritual garb
Born	(1926-06-06)6 June 1926 Birkenhead, England
Died	30 April 1988(1988-04-30) (aged 61) Sussex, England
Occupation	Wiccan Priest
Children	Paul and Janice (with Doreen); Maya Alexandria and Victor Mikhael (with Maxine)
Parent(s)	Margaret Bibby; Albert E Carter

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 Pagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca during the 1960s. Raised in a working-class family, he was introduced to esoteric ideas by his mother and grandmother from a young age, and as a young man began working as a medium in the local Spiritualist Churches before going on to study and practice ceremonial magic. In 1963, he was initiated into Gardnerian Wicca before founding his own coven, through which he merged many aspects of ceremonial magic into Wicca. He claimed to have been initiated by his Grandmother as a child, though evidence for this is lacking. Throughout the 1960s, he would court publicity in the press, appearing in a number of documentaries, marrying the far younger Maxine Sanders, and being declared to be the "King of the Witches" by his followers, something that led to other prominent Gardnerian Witches, such as Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, attacking him in the press. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he went on to work with a ceremonial magical group known as the Ordine Della Luna, prior to his death. The tradition he founded with Maxine Sanders became known as Alexandrian Wicca.

Born Orrell Alexander Carter, on 6 June 1926, in a house on Moon St, Birkenhead, Merseyside, he was the oldest of six surviving children. His father, Albert E Carter, was a dance-hall entertainer who suffered from alcoholism and married Margaret Bibby in Wigan in 1920. Later the family moved to Grape St, Manchester and unofficially changed their name to Sanders; Sanders was unaware of his official surname until he applied for a passport later in life, and only changed his name by deed poll in the 1960s.