The Trance Work
of Alex Sanders

Alex Sanders was well known as "King of the Witches" and the founder of the Alexandrian Wicca, but he was also a trance medium. People have different views about the source of the communications received by trance mediums. Explanations range from the straightforward occult one, that the entities who overshadow the medium are personalities in their own right and real forces, to the more psychological one that trance communications represent dissociated parts of the medium's psyche.

As a psychologist I keep an open mind and both views may contain some truth. Mediums often seem to slip from true clairvoyance into communications which are the voice of their own unconscious thoughts. Regardless however of the origin of trance personalities, mediums often produce clairvoyance and messages of a spiritual quality which outstrip the knowledge and spiritual state of the medium's everyday level of consciousness.

During his many years of trance mediumship, Alex was overshadowed by divine archetypes of many pantheons, although he had a special relationship with the Egyptian pantheon. The Sekhmet extract is from what is called, "The Southern Quarter Working", when Alex was working with the inner planes forces of the element of Fire.

In contrast to the traditional pairing of Sekhmet with the God Ptah, the Architect of the Universe, Alex believed that in an esoteric sense and in magical workings, Sekhmet's male counterpart was the male Geburic force of Set. Sekhmet's influence acted to tame the negative aspects of Geburah. As Her consort, Set operated as a healing rather than a negative destructive force, a destroyer of disease rather than Himself a pestilence.

Most of Alex's later trance workings were taped. The Sekhmet message was received on 5 October 1986. Below is an extract from the tape which can be used as a Charge in a Sekhmet ritual:

I am the Queen of Mars. It is I who calls the War Lord Set to me. It is He who fertilises me with Fire. I come to you as a Volcano, in a complete and powerful eruption. My molten metals are whiter than snow, golder than the locks of the most beautiful women of your Earth.

I am the Medusa, the Gorgon; whoso comes within my grip is turned to stone, yet I and my Lord can free that. It is I who comes to you with flaming hair. I it is who gives birth to the Child of Fire. I it is who tends the Fire of my Perfect Love. The Torch of Life is mine. I am the Creator Mother. I come to you as the Flame of Life. I am Sekhmet.

I come to purify, to purge. All the healing forces are mine. The heat of your hands comes from me to heal. The heat that flows perfectly to purge and purify away the cancers and evil growths of your world.

My consort answers unto me and feeds me with the power of Mars yet I come from beyond. It is I who softens the blow of his sword and makes it to be a healing force, to cut away the evil. You are blessed from the power of Mars. I shall come to you many times. We shall bring our cohorts, our dominions, our powers, our principalities. There are many in your world - your tiny minuscule place of existence - who would make our powers to be evil, who would preach and practice unclean (things). We come to you with a pure and perfect truth. Receive the life force, the force that flows through your body. Receive the warmth of the liquids that flow through your body. Receive the breath that cannot live without Fire. Receive the Earth's warmth from my Lord - the blazing orb of Mars, reflected to you by the Sun. Establish yourself upon Earth. Receive the Fire! Your world has the Pentecostal Force. Our world I have given to you as a gift of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Receive our two spirits fused into a Flame. We leave you.

The Trance Work of Alex Sanders by Vivianne Crowley was published in Children of Sekhmet (date to be confirmed)