Maxine Sanders

Maxine Sanders
Maxine Sanders in 2017
Born	(1946-12-30)30 December 1946
Occupation	Alexandrian Witch and Priestess, Co-Founder of the Alexandrian Tradition of Witchcraft
Spouse(s)	Alex Sanders
Children	Maya Alexandria and Victor Mikhael

Maxine Sanders (born Arline Maxine Morris on 30 December 1946 in Cheshire) is a key figure in the development of modern pagan witchcraft and Wicca and, along with her late husband, Alex Sanders, the co-founder of Alexandrian Wicca.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Maxine was educated at St. Joseph's Convent School in Manchester. In 1964, whilst a student at Loreburn Secretarial College, she first met Alex Sanders. They met through his friendship with her mother who had a range of esoteric interests but their accounts of her introduction to witchcraft vary. Alex's memoir describes her as "shy and inexperienced," with her potential being awoken only through her contact with him. Maxine's memoir gives a very different account, describing her experiences of witchcraft as already having been initiated at the age of 15 into a magical lodge in rituals performed in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, England. By the following year, she and at least one other person had been initiated and the coven was up and running. Maxine was quickly taken through the system of three degrees and by the age of 18 was a third degree Witch Queen although one source suggests that at that time her role was a somewhat passive one. It was said that at Alex's lectures all Maxine had to do was to "sit there in her finery." It is alleged that Alex said, "All I want you to do is sit there and look beautiful and represent the Goddess."

However, Alex's taste for publicity soon led to problems. In 1965, a midsummer ritual was attended by a newspaper photographer, unbeknown to some of those present, Maxine included. The subsequent report in a local newspaper carried recognisable photographs of her and she was thus "outed" without her permission. Maxine had just reconciled with her mother who disapproved of Alex, who died very shortly afterwards; stones were thrown at Maxine in the street while the windows of the house which had been her mother's were smashed.

Maxine and Alex were handfasted at Alderley Edge in 1965 and continued to initiate new witches in Manchester. In 1967, they moved to London where they lived and practised witchcraft in a basement flat in Notting Hill Gate. At Beltane 1968, the couple married in a civil ceremony in Kensington London. Alex and Maxine had two children: Maya, born in 1967, and Victor, born in 1972.