Alex Sanders (founder of religion)

Orrel Alexander Carter (born June 6, 1926 in Birkenhead , † April 30, 1988 ) was a British religious founder. Alongside Gerald Gardner, he was an important person in the development of the Wicca religion and the founder of the second oldest line of tradition (Alexandrian Wicca). He was proclaimed king of witches by his followers . Sanders has been married twice and has two children from each of these two marriages.

Life

childhood

Shortly after he was born, his parents moved to Manchester and officially changed their name from Carter to Sanders. Alex was the oldest of a total of 6 siblings. His father Harold Sanders was an entertainment musician and suffered from alcoholism. When Sanders was 7 years old, the Sanders family moved to Charlton . Due to the resulting high financial burden, his mother had to go to work as a cleaner while his father gave private music lessons.

initiation

Alex Sanders claimed to be the last descendant of an old race of Welsh witches and was ordained a witch by his grandmother as a child, who then introduced him to the art of witchcraft. He immediately destroyed his grandmother's book of shadows after her death.

Patricia Crowther, the high priestess of Gerald Gardner's Wicca Coven, told a completely different story: In 1961, Sanders wrote to her that he was interested in the occult , but had not yet been initiated as a witch. Sanders himself also said in an interview in 1962 that he had only been initiated as a witch for a year and was working in a witch coven . This statement was also confirmed by his wife and high priestess Maxine Sanders, who reported that Sanders had been initiated into the Gardnerian tradition in 1961 by a priestess from Patricia Crowthers Coven and had copied her book of shadows, as is common practice for training.

As early as 1943, Sanders had been introduced to a spiritistic circle by an acquaintance . There Sanders was trained as a medium by his own admission. Through his subsequent activities as an alleged "miracle healer", he gained a certain prominence.

Marriages and depression

In 1945, Sanders married his first wife Doreen, from whom he concealed his occupation with occult interests. They had 2 children, Paul and Janice. The marriage fell apart and in 1952 he left his wife for good. Sanders became depressed and his sister Joan took care of him. Afterwards, Sanders lived as a foster son with a wealthy couple whose own son had died. After his sister's death, he moved in with her husband Eric. In 1959, Sanders moved into a two room apartment and began working in a clothing wholesaler, where he was soon promoted to head of department.

After a year his condition improved and he sought contact with other witches. Through the initiation of several followers, Sanders founded his first coven in the early 1960s, thus establishing the Alexandrian (merged from Alex-Sandrian) line of tradition. Soon after, he met Maxine Morris, whom he made high priestess in his coven. Maxine Morris became Sander's second wife. They did not get married in church, but united in 1965 through a traditional handfasting (witch wedding), followed by a civil marriage in 1968. The couple moved to London in 1968, where their daughter Maya was born that same year. In 1971 the couple separated again because Maxine Sanders could not come to terms with her husband's bisexuality. In 1972 their son Victor was born. Alex Sanders moved to Sussex while his wife stayed in London with their two children. Until Sander's death, he and his wife Maxine had an intense relationship, despite the separation.

Election to the Witch King, Succession and Death

On June 6, 1965, Sanders received an invitation to a special ceremony. He was named Witch King for 7 years by high priestesses from various covens, which was repeated in 1972, 1979 and 1986. In doing so, he claimed the successor to Gerald Gardner , who brought the Wicca cult into being. Many Wicca followers strictly rejected this claim and after some disputes Wicca split into the Gardnerian line of tradition and the Alexandrian line of tradition.

Alex Sanders named his son Victor (born 1972) as his successor, but with this he broke an alleged tradition that the Britain Witchcraft Council of Elders would elect the Witch King. The latter institution, which claims to have 100,000 members, is considered to be an invention by followers of the Alexandrian tradition. Derek Taylor, with whom he had a homosexual relationship and who was murdered under unknown circumstances in 2000, should take care of the spiritual training of the coming Witch King. According to Maxine Sanders, however, Victor had no interest in succeeding him as the Witch King and moved to America.

On April 30, 1988 (Beltane) at 6:30 am, Alex Sanders died of lung cancer.

After Sanders' death on May 12, 1988, at a meeting of the elders of the Alexandrian tradition, the decision was made not to elect a new witch-king, as there was no need for it and no one was adequately prepared for this task.

effect

A sensational newspaper article made Sanders the focus of media attention in 1969. Based on this article, June Johns wrote her romanticizing Sanders biography " The Witches King " (1969). This was followed by enormous publicity (among other things, a film " Legend of the Witches " was shot in 1970 , in which Sanders also acted as a consultant), guest appearances on talk shows and invitations to lectures.

Sanders allowed the media to photograph and film his rituals. For media representatives, he and his wife Maxine celebrated a fake black mass on a nightclub stage. Through the publication of the photos and films, Sanders received further attention and he initiated hundreds (other sources report thousands) of followers in his Wicca tradition line, some of which later founded their own coven. Alex Sanders thus contributed to the fact that the Wicca cult became known and spread worldwide.

Sander's most famous student, Stewart Farrar, who was initiated by Sanders in his Alexandrian coven, first extolled Sanders as an even more important "magician" than Gerald Gardner, placing him on a par with Aleister Crowley in this regard . Farrar later relativized his positive statements, saying Sanders was both a true magician and a charlatan. Nevertheless, Farrar and Sanders maintained a friendly and respectful relationship until his death. Farrar wrote, partly together with his wife Janet Farrar, some books on the Alexandrian Wicca, which are now regarded as standard works among the Wicca followers. After the publication of the book " Eight Sabbats for Witches " in 1981, Stewart and Janet Farrar no longer referred to themselves as Alexandrian Wiccas, although they never officially left this line of tradition.

criticism

The Alexandrian tradition works primarily with the doctrine of the tree of life from the Kabbalah and introduced the pentagram ritual into the ritualistics of Wicca. According to Sanders, this was always part of the witchcraft tradition and was also in his grandmother's alleged "Book of Shadows". His own book Der Schatten, which he claims to have copied from his grandmother, shows only a few noteworthy differences in content from that of Gerald Gardner . While Gardner's tradition worships the goddess Aradia and the horned god Cernunnos , in the Alexandrian tradition these are Aradia and Karnayna (interpreted as a synonym for Cernunnos, but originally a nickname for Alexander the Great). There is also a text that is very similar to " The Charge of the Goddess " by Doreen Valiente .

These circumstances soon led to the accusation that Sanders had copied the Gardnerian "Book of Shadows" and only slightly modified it and also invented the whole story about his initiation by his own grandmother as a legend in order to deny the origin of his teachings from Gardnerian Wicca . This is also the unanimous view of all independent historical studies of the history of Wicca (e.g. by Ronald Hutton and Philip Heselton). Sander's wife Maxine later confirmed that Alex Sanders had copied his book of shadows in the usual manner from the Gardnerian book of shadows of the coven, in which he was initiated in 1961. Maxine Sanders also confirmed that the story of Sander's initiation by his grandmother was incorrect, but confirmed that he had been taught "witchcraft" by his grandmother.

In 1979, Alex Sanders announced that he wanted redress to the witch community for various injuries and public stupidity he had caused in the past, and that he also wanted the differences within Wicca to be resolved and that all Wiccas would become "more fraternal." "Should unite love in the face of the Goddess and God".

literature

• June Johns: King of the Witches. The world of Alex Sanders . The World of Books, Worms 1984, ISBN 3-88325-321-9 (English: King of the Witches. The World of Alex Sanders . P. Davies, London 1969, ISBN 0-432-07675-1 ).

Web links

• Alex Sanders biography

swell

1. ^ Cavendish, Richard (1970): Alex Sanders ", Man, Myth and Magic , ISBN 1-85435-731-X
2. ↑ June Johns (1969): King of the Witches , New York: Coward-McCann
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Hutton, Ronald (2001): Triumph of the Moon , Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-285449-6
4. ↑ ^{a b} "A Talk by Maxine Sanders" part 1, Witchcraft and Wicca Issue 3, p. 4. London: Children of Artemis
5. ^ "A Talk by Maxine Sanders" part 3, Witchcraft and Wicca Issue 5, p. 22. London: Children of Artemis
6. ↑ Janet Farrar & Gavin Bone: Progressive Witchcraft: New Ideas for en Hexenkult , Arun 2005: pp. 36–37, ISBN 3-935581-86-6
7. ↑ Farrar, Janet (1950-) and Stewart (1916-2000)
8. ↑ Sanders, O. Alexander (1979): "The Many Paths of Wicca" in The Cauldron issue 15, Lammas 1979