Alex Sanders the King of the Witches.pdf

By the same author

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The World of Alex Sanders

The Grasshopper Boy

Zoo Without Bars

JUNE JOHNS

With photographs by

JACK SMITH

PETER DAVIES

LONDON

First published .1969

<toutents

page

viii

Glossary

Introduction

Chapters

I. The Young Initiate

2. A Magic Childhood

3. The Haunted Hill

4. Call Down the Spirits

5. Bewitched

6. The Devil to Pay

7. Time of Atonement

8. In. Search of Angels

9. The Unwelcome Apprentice

10. Relic of the Past

II. Witch Wedding

12. King of the Witches

13. Toil and Trouble

14. Betrayal in the Coven

3°

7 2

l°S

II4

An Interview with Alex Sanders

120

Appendices

A. The Book of Shadows

B. The Witches' Calendar

C. Initiation Ceremonies

D. The Magic of Matter

13°

142

145

152

Made and printed in Great Britain by

Morrison and Gibb Limited; London and Edinburgh

3JIlustrations

The illustrations appear between pages 56-57 and 72-73.

Alex Sanders with his crystal

Maxine blesses her athame

Tarot cards

The witches' circle .

Maxine beside the altar

Alex honours the goddess

Maxine inside the circle

Breathing life into the fith-fath

The witches' dance

Walking to covenstead

Calling down the power

The symbolic sex act

The witches' altar

Passing the pentacle around the circle

The witches fall to the ground

Fertility rites

The black mass

3lntrobuction

ATHAMll

BOOK OF SHADOWS

The witch's black-hilted knife.

With book of rules, written in witch's own hand-

writing and copied by successive generations,

Group ofwitches.

Meeting place of a coven

Small meeting, not necessarily of a full coven.

Extra-sensory perception

A mass ofenergy or power raised by the witches and

sent to work their will.

Small image made of clay or plasticine to represent

a person on whom a restraint is to be worked.

Ancient Hebrew book of magic.

COVEN

COVENS'rEAD

ESBAT

ESP

FAMILIAR

Since the dawn of history man has believed in miracles. The

first tribesmen to discover the healing power of herbs, or to

recognize clouds as the forerunners ofrain, were elected magi,

or wise men. From this it was but a short step to divining the

future and to the formulation of spells to increase fertility or

destroy enemies.

As long ago as the Stone Age the wise man of the tribe was

dressed in an animal skin; he was called 'devil', which meant

'little god', and was worshipped by his followers as the chief

god's representative. The earliest record of this custom is a

palaeolithic painting found in a cave in the Ariege district of

southern France. It depicts a man clad in a stag's skin, with

antlers on his head-the Horned God, a symbol of benevolent

power in primitive times. Another, a man disguised as a

jackal, carved on slate, dates back to archaic Egypt.

In about 1100 B.C. women and officers of the harem of

Rameses III were brought to trial for making wax images of

the Pharaoh to the accompaniment of magic incantations.

These images were fith-faths, still used by witches today

against their enemies.

History shows that, as a new religion succeeds the old, the

FITH-FATH

THE KEy OF

SOLOMON

MEASURE

Length of cord measuring a witch's height at the

time of his initiation. Sometimes held as a 'hostage'

by the coven leader.

Originally a five-sided figure but now any circular

piece of metal inscribed with witch symbols.

Major meeting of whole coven or several covens.

Cards used in predicting the future.

Primitive form. of religion practised by negroes of

Haiti and elsewhere in the West Indies and America.

Originally the witch who bound the initiate, but

used only by non-witches to describe a male-witch.

Ancient word for witchcraft.

Initi~t:d male or female member ofwitchcraft group.

Magician, not necessarily a witch.

PENTACLE

SABBAT

TAROT CARD

VOODOO

WARLOCK

WICCA

WITCH

WIZARD

gods of the latter are invariably condemned as the devils of

the former, and it was thus that the pagan god became the

Christian devil. ill spite of this, Christianity and witchcraft

co-existed peaceably for centuries. In Britain, for instance,

London was still heathen six hundred years after the birth of

Christ, and although Augustine managed to convert the King

of Kent to Christianity, the rest of the country preferred

pagan rites of witchcraft.

But as the 'establishment' became Christian, the old religion

fell into disrepute, and in A.D. 668 the Archbishop ofCanterbury

ruled that people who ate and drank in heathen temples, or

wore the heads of beasts, should do three years' penance. The

witches continued to use the stag's horns, however. Their

only concession was to meet secretly, on moors or in lonely

forests. These meetings were known as 'sabbats'.* After

homage had been paid to the devil, usually present in the guise

of a black goat, or his deputy, the witches held a banquet.

This was followed by the main feature of the sabbat, the

dance, the tempo of which was often raised to a frenzy in

preparation for the final climax of sexual orgy.

It is important to note at this point that although we have

few historical records of 'white' witches at this time and must

include them under the general term 'witches', modem white

witches, who are the subject ofthis book, believe that they are

descended from, and adhere to, a separate tradition embracing

the worship not of Satan, but of the Homed God and the

Earth Mother-symbol of fertility, the oldest goddess known

to man. Certain aspects of white-witch dogma can be traced

in ancient religions all over the world, in Druidical beliefs, for

instance, and the incantations in Runic have been passed from

generation to generation. White witchcraft is invariably con-

fmed to doing good, restraining evil and promoting fertility.

But although some attempt was made in the Middle Ages

* Often confused, erroneously, with the term 'coven'. The latter is much

more recent and refers to the basic organizational grouping of thirteen

witches-six couples and a leader, or eleven priests, a high priest and high

priestess.

to distinguish between beneficial and harmful magic, it had

little effect on the treatment of the witches themselves. From

being a joyous religion, witchcraft was changed overnight

when, in 14 84, Pope Innocent VIII put his seal on ~eBull.t~at

condemned witches as heretics for interfering WIth fertility.

From now on terror would invade the life ofanyone suspected

of working miracles.

In 1486, two members of the Inquisition, with the full

approval of the Pope, wrote an~ ha~ publis~ed the boo~

Malleus Male.ficarum, which described in considerable det~11

methods of discovering and punishing witches and ways m

which magic could be harmful. The book, which by. 1520

had run to fourteen editions, confirmed popular miscon-

ceptions and hostility towards witchcraft and was to influe~ce

public opinion in Europe until after the Reformation

(Protestants were even greater witch-haters than their

predecessors). .

One of the first countries to declare war on Witches had

been France, where they .were burnt at the stake several

decades before the Papal Bull. At that time whole villages still

followed the old religion and even the priests, who were

mostly drawn from the peasant class, were only outwardly

Christian. Having tried to stamp out witchcraft by persuasion,

the clergy, backed by civil law, overcame it by force-the

same fate as had befallen the ancient religions of Egypt and of

the Aztecs.

ill England tolerance had prevailed until the arrival of the

inquisitors. At first the law forbade them to use torture, but

nevertheless rumour and terror were rife in every village. The

clergy claimed that all witches had made a pact with the Devil

who, in return, gave them a 'familiar', usually in the form ofa

domestic animal, to run errands for them and bewitch their

enemies. At a time when most people believed that the earth

was flat, it was not difficult to imagine such evil properties

in any obedient animal, especially ifits owner were unsociable;

and lived alone. (Spiteful women are not confmed to the

twentieth century; they abounded in medieval Europe!)

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