Modern Wicca

by Michael Howard

  Maxine Sanders, however, has given a rather different version of the event in one of her autobiographies. She said that one day among the sackfuls of mail the couple received from all over the world was a letter written in “a priestly manner.” It said the Craft was in need of a leader to take it from the days of persecution into the New Age of Aquarius. The letter went on to say that the Elders of the Craft had met in council and decided Alex Sanders would be this leader. At first Sanders reacted with pride and then he laughed and dismissed the letter as a hoax. In the days following the receipt of the letter he thought about the offer and decided if it was authentic then the person required would be a better man than he was. Also whoever took the title King of the Witches would become the sacrificial divine king and that role was something he was not willing to take on.

  Allegedly, a week later an “odd-looking man” arrived at the Sanders’ home. He was in his mid-thirties, ex-public school educated and well dressed, with an overbearing and pompous manner. After he was served tea, he asked to speak to Mr. Sanders alone, and Maxine was annoyed she had been so summarily dismissed by this stranger. After the man left, Sanders stayed in his room. When he finally emerged he announced to his wife and the curious coven members that the mysterious visitor was a representative of the so-called Council of Craft Elders who had sent the letter. The man had delivered another letter from the group that Sanders had been reading and rereading since he left. It requested Sanders take on the task and honor of accepting the kingship of the Craft.

  Sanders was evidently giving the matter some further thought when a smartly dressed woman turned up, claiming to be another messenger from the shadowy Council of Elders. She said she had been sent to ask Sanders a third time if he would accept the crown they were offering and take the official title of King of the Witches. Sanders at first replied he was not worthy and had “broken the laws of the Craft” (Maxine Sanders 2008: 117). Finally he agreed, and the time and place for the coronation ceremony was agreed upon.

  It was held two months after this last meeting with a representative of the Council at the house of one of Sanders’ witches in Didsbury near Manchester. Two rooms had been cleared of everyday furniture and thirteen throne-like chairs were placed in a semi-circle around a simple stool. These chairs were for the thirteen “witch queens” of the alleged 127 covens Sanders had founded, including Maxine Sanders, and the stool was for him to sit on during the rite. After a purification ritual Sanders entered the room wearing a plain dark robe. He was anointed with sacred aromatic oils and redressed in a white linen gown. The actual ceremony was performed by an officiating priest, who Maxine Sanders says was in his twenties, so he could hardly have been a member of the Council of Elders. An older woman did the actual crowning of Sanders, consecrating him as King of the Witches, and giving him the new witch name, “Verbuis.”

  Predictably, the media soon picked up on the title, or were alerted to it by Sanders, and the Gardnerians reacted to it badly. In May 1966, having failed to persuade Sanders to stop his publicity antics, Eleanor Bone joined forces with Patricia Crowther and, with the encouragement of Jack Bracelin, publicly denounced Sanders as an imposter who did not have the proper initiation credentials. Sanders eventually conceded that the title of King of the Witches was an honorary one referring only to his position of authority and leadership over his own covens. It was not meant, as the media had stated, to suggest he had any authority over any other witches who did not belong to what became known as the Alexandrian Wiccan tradition.

  Every seven years from his original coronation as witch king, Sanders organized a ceremony to be re-crowned. This reflected the alleged connection between the role and the ancient concept of the divine king sacrificed after reigning for seven years. His blood was spilled on the land to ensure the continued fertility of the lands and a plentiful harvest. I was invited to one of these re-crowning ceremonies held in the tiny basement apartment in Bayswater, West London, where the couple had moved to from Manchester in 1967. It was a hot summer’s day and the place was crowded with members of Sanders’ coven and invited guests. The actual ceremony took place out of sight in another room to which the outsiders present were not invited.

  At the end of the ritual, which took about an hour as I remember it, although it seemed longer, Alex Sanders made a dramatic entrance into the room where we were patiently waiting. He was dressed in a theatrical costume as an ancient Egyptian pharaoh complete with heavy black eye make-up, a double crown, and what looked like heavy satin robes. He held a scourge and a crooked wand in his hands. The witches present lined up to give their allegiance to the reborn King of the Witches by kissing a ring with a large stone setting which he wore on a finger. I was invited to follow suit, but refused, as I did not recognize the title or his authority.

  Following his original anointing as the King of the Witches, Alex Sanders began to peddle the grandiose fantasy that he was directly descended from real royalty. He claimed that one of his Welsh ancestors was Owain Glyndwr, the medieval rebel prince who led an uprising against the rule of Wales by the English. He also confided in his followers that Glyndwr had been a member of the Craft and a former holder of the title of King of the Witches. Needless to say, there is no historical evidence to support any of these claims.

  Not content with claiming his grandmother was a Wiccan, in one of the lectures Sanders gave to his students he told them witchcraft originated on the lost continent of Atlantis. According to Sanders, King Arthur and Merlin came from Lyonesse, or Atlantis, “where the Great White Mother had her power and [which] was the site of the Garden of Eden.” With the imminent destruction of Atlantis, the Great Goddess chose a few initiates to transmit the ancient wisdom (Wicca) to “the younger races” of the planet. These “chosen ones” left the island before its destruction and traveled to Britain, Greece, Egypt, and even the Americas, where they founded mystery schools. The first ships to escape the cataclysm arrived in Britain bearing Arthur, Merlin, and Morgan. They made landfall in Wales and established what is now known as witchcraft (Alex Sanders 1984: 31–36).

  In the meantime, while Jack Bracelin had been encouraging Ray Bone and Pat Crowther to challenge Sanders’ authenticity in public, he was involved in more material matters behind the scenes. In 1966, he attempted to sell off the land at the Five Acres Naturist Club for building. Two members of the British Parliament, one of whom was allegedly a member of the Craft, promised to help Bracelin in his efforts to sell the property by getting planning permission passed for the land. This would have increased its value and raised the selling price. Apparently Bracelin’s grand plan was to use the sale proceeds to launch a new witchcraft magazine to replace Pentagram and buy a large house in the fashionable county of Berkshire. The idea was to open the house and grounds as a witchcraft center and a naturist club exclusively for witches (DV notebook entry dated March 30, 1966, in MOW archive). Unfortunately the idea came to nothing.

  In 1967, the Sanderses decided to leave Manchester and move to London as caretakers of a large house in Clanicarde Gardens in West London. This was owned by a Greek friend of one of their coven members and was split into individual bedsitters. At the time Maxine Sanders says their coven in Manchester consisted of only six members, but when they arrived in London it was in the middle of the so-called hippie summer of love. When word got out of their arrival, the flower children began to descend on the apartment, seeking spiritual enlightenment and initiation into witchcraft. The front room was turned into a temporary camping site with people in sleeping bags all over the floor (Maxine Sanders 2008: 129).

  Every day the small apartment filled up with young people seeking counseling. Many of these were runaways from home or drug addicts—perhaps the reason Doreen Valiente commented that Sanders attracted the younger generation to his coven. However, because of a fear of adverse publicity, no drugs were allowed to be used on the premises. Open meetings were held each Friday evening, during which Sanders t
aught practical magic, often using techniques derived without credit from Franz Bardon’s books. Free food was provided to those who wanted it, using discarded vegetables from a nearby street market. Sanders made pies decorated with pastry fertility symbols, and pans of vegetarian curry were always ready on the cooker.

  Although their relationship had been cemented in a witches’ handfasting in Manchester, at Beltane 1968, Maxine and Alex Sanders were legally married in a civil ceremony at Kensington Registry Office. The only people present were the Greek landlord who was their employer and a gardener from the local Kensington Gardens, who both acted as witnesses. Their four-month-old daughter was left with one of the tenants of the boarding house, a Maltese striptease artist with gangland connections. After the wedding ceremony they returned to their apartment for a reception of digestive biscuits washed down with a bottle of champagne donated by their employer (Maxine Sanders 2008: 139).

  Although the couple had initially attempted in their dealings with the press to promote a positive image of modern witchcraft, sometimes without success, the Sunday newspapers were still only interested in publishing sensational stories about ‘black magic’ and devil worship. In 1969, they were given the opportunity again when Charles Pace contacted The News of the World and offered to expose the witches he knew for payment. As the High Priest of Ray Bone’s coven in Streatham, South London, Pace knew everybody in the contemporary Wiccan scene, including the Sanderses. Pace was something of a hypocrite, as in a letter to Cecil Williamson in October 1963 he denounced as “rubbish” a series of sensational articles on witchcraft published the previous month in the News of the World. He said he was going to deal with the reporters concerned, Peter Earle and Noyes Thomas, by challenging them to a “magical battle” at Candlemas 1964 (letter dated October 18, 1963, doc. 172/ref. 193 in MOW archive).

  During the 1960s and 1970s, witches were often approached by representatives of national newspapers offering them large sums of money for their stories. While I was working at RCA Records in Curzon Street in Central London in the 1970s, one of my colleagues revealed that he was a member of Sanders’ coven. He told me he had been contacted several times by newspapers offering payment for an exposé of what happened during coven meetings. They were particularly interested in the possibility that such meetings involved kinky sex orgies. My informant was told that even if they were quite innocent it did not matter, as he could invent the stories and still get paid. Although he was tempted by the considerable amounts being offered, to his credit he declined all their offers, as he did not want to betray his initiators. Others were not so loyal.

  The 1969 exposé included my own Wiccan “grandmother,” Celia Penny (witch name “Francesca”), and the articles were published in the News of the World over several weeks. Over that period the headlines to the articles changed from “Black Magic—an evil exposed” to “Witchcraft—an evil exposed.” Because the Sanders held open meetings for newcomers, it was very easy for journalists to infiltrate them. One posing as a multimillionaire chicken farmer aroused Maxine Sanders’ suspicions because he kept asking peculiar questions. Her fears were realized when he turned out to be working for the News of the World. In the story he wrote about the coven, it was described as a “satanic witch cult,” and edited conversations between the witches were published that had been secretly tape-recorded without their knowledge.

  Charles Pace used his extensive contacts with members of the Wiccan movement in London to introduce undercover reporters to the witches he knew. One of these was the late Madge Worthington, High Priestess of the Whitecroft Gardnerian tradition, named after the road in Beckenham, Kent, where her High Priest, the late Arthur Eaglen, lived. Madge received an enquiry from a Roman Catholic priest who wanted to be initiated into Wicca. She had telephoned my Gardnerian initiator, Rosina Bishop, asking for her advice and was told to have nothing to do with him. Unfortunately she ignored this advice and a meeting was set up in a London hotel with the priest, which was secretly recorded by a reporter. The cleric was not really interested in Wicca, but wanted to attend a Black Mass and deflower virgin girls. The story was published in the News of the World together with a photograph of a surprised Madge Worthington standing on the doorstep of her riverside house in Chiswick, West London. The story claimed that her husband knew nothing about her involvement in witchcraft.

  In a strange way, the newspaper stories had a perversely positive effect, despite the damage they did to the private lives of several of those who were exposed in them. Always after such sensational stories appeared in the press the publicly known figures in the Craft received increased mail from enquirers. Most came from people asking how they could join a coven. On the downside, these people often had ulterior motives. Like the Catholic priest who had contacted the Whitecroft Coven, many of them were hoping Wicca rites involved sex orgies. In fact, the Sheffield Coven refused to accept single men for initiation as a method of screening out those just looking for sexual thrills.

  Some years earlier, Alex Sanders had acted as a consultant on the movie Eye of the Devil starring David Niven and the young American actress, Sharon Tate. She was the wife of film producer Roman Polanski, who in 1968 produced the classic film Rosemary’s Baby starring Mia Farrow, about a cult of modern devil worshippers in New York. In August 1969, the media reported a “ritual murder” had taken place in the Hollywood hills. Several people were killed in horrible circumstances, including Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant at the time. It was discovered by the police that members of a gang called The Family, led by Charles Manson, an ex-convict and self-styled spiritual guru, had carried out the murders. The group had a commune in the Californian desert and was involved in supplying drugs to wealthy Hollywood movie stars.

  There were also unconfirmed allegations in the media that Manson had connections with an OTO lodge in California and a sinister group known as The Process founded by two ex-Scientologists. They had a branch in London with a coffee-bar that was frequented by well-known occultists in the capital including Madeline Montalban and members of her Order of the Morning Star, and the Sanderses. It has been widely alleged, but often denied, that during his time on the film set of Eye of the Devil Alex Sanders actually initiated Sharon Tate into Wicca.

  A more positive development in December 1969 was a meeting between Alex Sanders and a journalist named Stewart Farrar (1916–2000), who later went on to write novels, screenplays, and television scripts. Farrar was sent by the popular weekly magazine Reveille to attend the press review of an X-rated documentary film called Legend of the Witches, starring Alex and Maxine Sanders. It caused controversy, and still does, because it featured Sanders sacrificing a live chicken, performing a Black Mass, and taking part in a mock orgy. In an interview with the UK pagan magazine Pentacle in October 2007, Maxine Sanders said she was opposed to the sacrifice, but it went ahead anyway. At the time, the film was denounced by Wiccans, and when a video of it was shown at a private screening at the witchcraft museum in Boscastle a few years ago, some members of the audience protested at its showing.

  Following the press review, Stewart Farrar visited the Sanderses’ apartment to interview them. He was so intrigued by what they had to say about witchcraft he attended one of their open meetings and was invited to a skyclad circle. In the subsequent article he wrote, Farrar said Sanders had told him there were ten degrees of initiation into Wicca. From the description he gave, they seem to be related to the grades used by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and illustrated Sanders’ interest in ritual magic. Sanders also dismissed Gerald Gardner as merely a first-degree witch who had invented his rituals. He added that he regarded the Gardnerians as “mere beginners—genuine witches, but only of the first grade” (Farrar January 10, 1970).

  Stewart Farrar had already been interested in the occult through his friendship with the Golden Dawn magician and writer Francis King and his partner Isabel Sutherland, the deputy editor of the encyclopedic part-w
ork Man, Myth and Magic, in the 1970s. At Farrar’s meeting with the Sanders, he had suddenly realized that Wicca was the spiritual path he wanted to follow. In turn, Alex Sanders had been pleased with the positive angle of the article he had written and as a result asked Farrar to write a book about Alexandrian Wicca. He agreed and this was published in 1971 under the title of What Witches Do. Some of its Gardnerian critics waspishly claimed it should really have been entitled What Some Witches Do.

  While Alex was researching the book, he and Maxine invited Stewart Farrar to become a witch and be initiated into their coven. He accepted the offer because he believed it would help the writing of the book to have an insider’s view. He was duly initiated at the February full moon in 1970. Shortly afterwards, a young woman named Janet Owen, who was working for A&M Records, joined the Sanderses’ coven. Stewart Farrar first met her when Alex Sanders was recording an album called A Witch is Born. He was taking the photographs for the sleeve and performing the voiceover on the record while Janet Owen was acting as an initiate on it. Eventually he and Janet were to get married, break away from the Sanderses’ coven, form their own, and move from London to rural Ireland.

  Whether Stewart Farrar believed Sanders’ story that he inherited his Book of Shadows from his Welsh grandmother is not known. However in What Witches Do he wrote that while he had never seen one, he believed the Gardnerian version of the BoS was substantially the same as the one used by the Alexandrian covens (Farrar 1971: 34). He also told friends that Sanders was actively bisexual and even had a boyfriend during the time he was married to Maxine, which she did not like (Guerra 2008: 100). This is why they eventually divorced, and another reason why the homophobic Gardnerians were opposed to him. In fact, Stewart and Janet Farrar were among the first prominent Wiccans to say there was nothing wrong with gay people joining covens, although Stewart did have reservations about all male or all-female covens because of problems with the gender polarity of Wiccan rites.