Alexandrian Wicca

Alexandrian Wicca is an initiatory Wiccan tradition founded by Alex Sanders and his wife Maxine Sanders in Britain during the 1960s. Named after Alex Sanders, who was dubbed “King of the Witches” by the British tabloid press, the tradition shares its essential structure with Gardnerian Wicca while incorporating a greater emphasis on ceremonial magic, Kabbalah, and the broader Western esoteric tradition. It is one of the founding strands of what is collectively known as British Traditional Wicca (BTW), and its covens and lineages have spread throughout the English-speaking world and beyond.

History and origins

Alex Sanders (1926-1988) grew up in Manchester and claimed that his initiation into witchcraft came from his grandmother when he was a child, a story that researchers including the historian Ronald Hutton have been unable to corroborate from the historical record. What is documented is that Sanders came into contact with Gardnerian Wicca in the 1960s, almost certainly through a copy of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows that was circulating more widely than Gardner’s tradition formally authorized. Sanders adapted and expanded this material, incorporating ceremonial magic practices from the Solomonic tradition, Enochian magic, and Kabbalah, and began initiating students into what became known as the Alexandrian tradition.

In 1969, the journalist Stewart Farrar was commissioned to write an article about Alex Sanders and ended up taking initiation into the tradition along with his future wife Janet. The Farrars subsequently became the most influential writers on Alexandrian Wicca, publishing a series of accessible and detailed books including What Witches Do (1971) and Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981) that introduced Alexandrian practice to a wide international audience. These books remain important references for practitioners today.

Alex Sanders died in 1988, but Maxine Sanders continued to be active in the tradition for decades afterward, as did numerous lineaged High Priestesses and High Priests who had received initiation during the tradition’s formative years.

Core beliefs and practices

Alexandrian Wicca shares with Gardnerian Wicca the veneration of a Goddess and a Horned God as the primary divine pair, the coven structure led by a High Priestess and High Priest, the eight Sabbats of the Wheel of the Year marking the solar cycle, and the four Esbats tied to the full moon. The tradition works with the five elements (earth, air, fire, water, and spirit), uses a ritual circle cast with specific tools (athame, wand, chalice, pentacle), and marks members’ progress through a three-degree initiatory system.

The ceremonial magic influence in Alexandrian Wicca is most visible in several areas. Alexandrian ritual tends to use more elaborate banishing and invoking procedures drawn from ceremonial magic, including forms of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. The Kabbalistic framework, including the Tree of Life, the divine names associated with the sephiroth, and the archangels of the four directions, appears more prominently in Alexandrian work than in most Gardnerian practice. The tradition is generally comfortable citing Aleister Crowley alongside Gerald Gardner as influences, something that Gardnerian tradition is more circumspect about.

The Great Rite, the Drawing Down of the Moon, the Charge of the Goddess, and the ritual forms of the eight Sabbats are all observed in Alexandrian practice, generally in forms that are closely related to the Gardnerian originals while showing characteristic Alexandrian elaborations.

Open or closed

Alexandrian Wicca is a closed, initiatory tradition. The first-degree initiation marks entry into the coven and the tradition. The second degree involves a more extensive process and confers the ability to initiate others. The third degree is the highest level of initiation and marks the practitioner as a fully fledged High Priest or High Priestess with the authority to hive off and found a new coven.

The tradition’s core ritual material is transmitted within initiatory lineages. A significant amount of Alexandrian practice became public through the Farrars’ books and through the availability of the core Book of Shadows material online in later decades, so the boundary between public and private material in Alexandrian practice is less absolute than in some traditions. Nevertheless, the full experience of the tradition requires working within a lineaged coven.

How to begin

Those drawn to Alexandrian Wicca who seek formal initiation begin by seeking out a working Alexandrian coven or group. The Alexandrian tradition maintains informal networks through which seekers can find established covens, and organizations such as the Covenant of the Goddess maintain directories that include some Alexandrian groups. Seekers should expect a period of study and building of relationship with a coven before initiation is offered.

Reading the Farrars’ published works, particularly The Witches’ Way and Eight Sabbats for Witches, provides excellent groundwork for understanding what Alexandrian practice involves. Vivianne Crowley’s Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Age (1989) offers a thoughtful perspective on the tradition’s structure and theology from an initiated Wiccan author. Approaching potential coven connections with patience, genuine curiosity, and respectful humility is the appropriate stance for a serious seeker.

In myth and popular culture

Alexandrian Wicca received unusually early public exposure through Alex Sanders’s cultivation of the media in the 1960s. The 1969 documentary “Legend of the Witches” showed Alexandrian ritual practice to a wide British public and is one of the earliest documentary records of modern Wiccan ceremony. The documentary was distributed commercially and generated considerable discussion, as well as introducing Wicca to people who would later become practitioners.

Stewart Farrar’s “What Witches Do” (1971) was among the first books to describe Wiccan practice from an insider perspective, and because it focused specifically on Alexandrian working, it shaped the image of Wicca internationally for the decade after its publication. Subsequent Farrar books, particularly “Eight Sabbats for Witches” (1981) and “The Witches’ Way” (1984), co-authored with Janet Farrar, became standard references across the English-speaking world and were the main source through which practitioners in North America, Australia, and elsewhere encountered systematic Wiccan ritual structure.

The tradition appears in Vivianne Crowley’s academic and practitioner writing, particularly “Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Age” (1989), which brought a Jungian psychological framework to Alexandrian practice. This book reached an academic as well as popular audience and contributed to taking Wicca seriously as a subject of scholarly study.

Myths and facts

Common misconceptions about Alexandrian Wicca include the following.

• Alexandrian Wicca is frequently described as simply a more ceremonial version of Gardnerian Wicca. While the ceremonial magic influence distinguishes it from many Gardnerian covens, the two traditions have influenced each other substantially over six decades, and the differences are now less pronounced than in the 1960s; both are better understood as related expressions of British Traditional Wicca than as sharply distinct traditions.
• The claim that Alex Sanders received a genuine Gardnerian initiation before founding his tradition is not supported by the historical record. The most credible account is that he worked from a copy of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows obtained through unofficial channels.
• Alexandrian Wicca is sometimes described as a closed or secretive tradition. While initiation is required for full participation, the Farrars’ extensive publications made much Alexandrian material publicly available, and the tradition is less opaque than some initiatory systems.
• The title “Alexandrian” is sometimes assumed to refer to the ancient city of Alexandria, implying a connection to Hellenistic or Egyptian religious traditions. The name derives from Alex Sanders, its founder.
• Some accounts suggest that Alexandrian Wicca declined after Alex Sanders’s death in 1988. The tradition remained active through Maxine Sanders’s ongoing work, through lineaged covens on multiple continents, and through the continuing influence of the Farrar books, which have remained in print.