During the 1960s, Alex Sanders and his wife and working partner Maxine Sanders developed and popularized a variant of Wiccan practice that became known as Alexandrian Wicca, incorporating ritual material drawn substantially from Gardnerian Wicca alongside additional elements from ceremonial magic traditions, including material with resemblances to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and other Western esoteric sources. Alex Sanders cultivated a highly public profile unusual for the movement at the time, giving frequent press interviews, appearing on television, and adopting the self-styled title King of the Witches, a stance that drew both new adherents and considerable skepticism from other practitioners.
Alexandrian Wicca followed Gardnerian practice in its basic ritual structure, its degree system of initiation, and its worship of a god and goddess, while distinguishing itself through Sanders' own additions and through the sheer scale of public attention his media presence generated, which introduced many newcomers to Wicca through Sanders and Maxine Sanders directly rather than through Gardner's own more private lineage.
The tradition spread quickly through Britain and, in subsequent decades, internationally, becoming, alongside Gardnerian Wicca, one of the two most widely recognized traditional lineages within the broader modern Wiccan movement.