Alex Sanders (6 June 1926 – 30 April 1988), born Orrell Alexander Carter,[1] who went under the craft name Verbius,[2] was an English occultist and High Priest in the modern Pagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding, and later developing with Maxine Sanders, the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca, also called Alexandrian Witchcraft, during the 1960s.

Raised in a working-class family, Alex, as a young man, began working as a medium in the local Spiritualist Churches before going on to study and practise ceremonial magic.

[1] After his divorce from Maxine, Sanders married for a third and final time to Gillian Sicka in December in 1982 in Hastings and Rother.

One account, given in Sanders' biography, King of the Witches by June Johns, tells that Alex, visiting his Welsh grandmother, Mary Bibby, unannounced, stumbled upon her performing a ritual.

"[10] However, this assertion that Sanders was initiated by his grandmother in any fashion has been discredited, as Wibberley (2018) states:[1] These documents, prepared in 2018 and recently made publicly available through the Alexandrian Witchcraft Timeline & Archive, show beyond a doubt that the story of Alex’s childhood initiation at the hands of his maternal grandmother Mary Bibby (née Roberts) is not credible as an accurate historical account of events.

[12] This publicity had several unfortunate side-effects for Sanders, including the loss of his job at the library and estrangement from the Crowthers, who considered him a troublesome upstart and refused to initiate him.

[12][16] Sanders' alleged magical feats included creating familiars and healing warts, illnesses, and physical deformities.

[5] After the Second World War and his separation from Doreen and his children, Sanders felt isolated by his occult knowledge, and decided to live a life of the "left-hand path", after having drifted from one low-level job to another, including having sexual affairs with both men and women.

It worked all right – I was walking through Manchester and I was accosted by a middle-aged couple who told me that I was the exact double of their only son, who had died some years previously.

I held parties, I bought expensive clothes, I was sexually promiscuous; but it was only after a time that I realised I had a fearful debt to pay.Sanders' sister, Joan, was injured in an accidental shooting and shortly after diagnosed with terminal cancer at a very young age.

[19][20] Sanders blamed his sister's ill-health on himself for his involvement in the left hand path, and resolved to stop using his magic for selfish reasons and instead teach it to others.

It was around this time, Di Fiosa (2004) notes, that Sanders believed that angels told him to seek employment as a porter, book-duster, and odd-job man in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, where he could access an original copy of the Key of Solomon.

[22] Not long thereafter, Sanders' employment was terminated for dismantling the late 19th century edition of the Mathers' translation of the Key of Solomon.

In 1965, they handfasted, and in 1968, they married in a civil ceremony[24] and moved into a basement flat near Notting Hill Gate in London, where they ran their coven and taught classes on Witchcraft.

Sanders offered the Press an alternative story, proposing to hold a ritual at a magical site at Alderley Edge, where he would raise a man from the dead.

After much mumbo jumbo Alex dramatically intoned the invocation slowly and with great deliberation, the corpse couldn't help but respond to such power.

These were the days of innocence, but the Christians were safe and Alex was on his way to a life of self-imposed notoriety.Sanders frequently appeared in ritual photos as robed or wearing only a loincloth, while the other witches that surrounded him were skyclad, or naked.

Alex and Maxine's strong relationship continued, "although it varied in intensity, from a fierce sense of loyalty, blasting curses, to declarations of love until his death in 1988".

[25] In 1979, Sanders announced to the witchcraft community that he wished "to make amends for some of the past hurts that I have given and many public stupidities I created for others of the Craft", and expressed his desire that the Wica should some day put aside their differences and "unite in brotherly love before the face of the Lady and the Lord", allowing them to become great again and respected in the outside world.

Together, they developed the magical work of Sanders' Order, the Ordine Della Luna in Constantinople, which he was chartered to operate as Grand Prior for England and Wales by a contact in London in 1967 who claimed to be a descendant of the Byzantine Palaeologos dynasty, but who was actually an eccentric Englishman of Newport on the Isle of Man called Peter Francis Mills.