A Voice In The Forest, Spirit Conversations With Alex Sanders Book Review – A Friendly Dive Into Mystical Wisdom

I picked up A Voice In The Forest with the kind of skepticism that any serious practitioner brings to channeled material. The premise—spirit communications with the late Alex Sanders, the self-proclaimed King of the Witches—is exactly the sort of thing that either opens a profound door or collapses under the weight of its own audacity. Jimahl di Fiosa claims to have received these communications through trance mediumship over an extended period, and the resulting text reads as a series of conversations with the departed founder of Alexandrian Wicca. I knew Sanders only through his reputation and through the accounts of those who trained in his tradition, so I came to this book not as a devotee but as a curious outsider who wanted to understand what Sanders might still have to say—or what someone believed he had to say—from beyond the veil.

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A Voice In The Forest, Spirit Conversations With Alex Sanders by Jimahl Di Fiosa

By Jimahl Di Fiosa

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Bottom Line

Di Fiosa presents a series of alleged spirit communications with Alex Sanders that range from genuinely insightful commentary on the state of modern Wicca to passages that feel suspiciously like the medium’s own opinions dressed in Sanders’s voice. The book is a fascinating curiosity for anyone interested in Alexandrian Wicca or the history of British witchcraft, but it demands that the reader bring their own discernment. Take it as food for thought rather than gospel, and you will get something worthwhile from the experience.

Channeling the King of the Witches

The structure of the book is conversational—di Fiosa presents the material as transcribed dialogues between himself and the spirit of Alex Sanders, who died in 1988. The conversations cover a wide range of topics: the direction of modern Wicca, the importance of lineage, the relationship between witchcraft and ceremonial magic, and Sanders’s reflections on his own legacy. Di Fiosa provides context and commentary between the channeled passages, which helps ground the more esoteric material in something approaching historical reality.

The writing oscillates between moments of striking clarity and passages that meander without arriving anywhere. When “Sanders” speaks about the corruption of initiatory traditions by ego-driven leaders, the words carry genuine force and specificity. When the conversation turns to more abstract metaphysical topics, the voice becomes vague and could belong to any number of generic spirit guides. This inconsistency is the book’s central challenge: you are constantly evaluating whether what you are reading sounds like Alex Sanders or like someone’s idea of what Alex Sanders should sound like.

Sanders on Wiccan Tradition and Lineage

The most compelling sections of the book deal with Sanders’s alleged views on the state of Wiccan initiatory lineage. In one particularly striking passage, the spirit voice argues that lineage has become a “currency of status” rather than a living transmission of power, and that too many covens treat initiation as a rubber stamp rather than a genuine transformative experience. Whether these are Sanders’s actual posthumous opinions or di Fiosa’s channeled projection of them, they resonate with criticisms I have heard from numerous experienced practitioners over the years.

Sanders also reportedly discusses his complicated relationship with Gerald Gardner and the Gardnerian tradition, claiming that the rivalry between Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca was always more about personalities than about genuine doctrinal differences. He suggests that the two streams were meant to merge eventually and that the continued separation serves no one. This is a provocative claim that will either delight or infuriate readers depending on their own traditional allegiances. As someone who stands outside both traditions, I found it refreshing to hear—or at least to read—a voice advocating for unity rather than sectarian boundary-drawing.

There is also a memorable section where Sanders addresses the controversy surrounding his own claims to have been initiated by his grandmother. Rather than defending the story outright, the spirit voice takes a more nuanced position, suggesting that the literal truth of the claim matters less than the spiritual reality it pointed toward. This is the kind of slippery reasoning that will frustrate historians, but as someone who works with tarot and astrology—fields where symbolic truth and literal truth often diverge—I found it thought-provoking even as I recognized its evasiveness.

The Question of Authenticity

Any book of channeled material lives or dies on one question: do you believe this is genuine communication with the dead, or is it the medium’s subconscious dressed up in someone else’s clothes? Di Fiosa, to his credit, does not insist that the reader accept the communications uncritically. He acknowledges in his introduction that mediumship is an imperfect art and that his own filters inevitably color the material. This intellectual honesty earns the book more credibility than it would have if di Fiosa had simply declared everything to be the unvarnished word of Sanders.

That said, there are passages where the mask slips. When “Sanders” opines on topics that seem oddly specific to di Fiosa’s own interests, or when the spirit voice suddenly adopts vocabulary and phrasing patterns that feel contemporary rather than consistent with Sanders’s known speaking style, the illusion thins. I found myself keeping a mental tally of passages that felt genuinely “other” versus those that felt like ventriloquism. The ratio was roughly even, which is either a testament to di Fiosa’s skill as a medium or a measure of how well he internalized Sanders’s public persona.

As a tarot reader, I approach channeled material the same way I approach a spread: with openness to what emerges but without surrendering my critical faculties. The most useful way to read this book is not as a transcript of fact but as a contemplative text that raises questions worth sitting with. Did Alex Sanders actually say these things from beyond death? I cannot answer that. But the questions the book raises about tradition, authority, and the evolution of witchcraft are worth asking regardless of their source.

Writing Style and Craft

Di Fiosa writes clearly and without excessive ornamentation. His commentary sections are well-organized and provide useful historical context for readers who may not be deeply versed in Alexandrian Wicca’s history. The channeled passages themselves vary in quality—some are eloquent and pithy, while others ramble. The book’s structure as a series of conversations gives it a natural rhythm, though the lack of a strong editorial hand means some exchanges go on longer than they should. A tighter edit could have cut perhaps forty pages of repetitive material without losing anything essential. The physical production by Logios is modest but adequate, with a clean layout that serves the text well.

Emotional Impact

The book’s emotional power is uneven but occasionally real. The passages where Sanders discusses his own death and his perspective on having left unfinished work carry a melancholy weight that moved me unexpectedly. There is a moment where the spirit voice speaks about watching the Alexandrian tradition fracture after his passing, and the sadness in those words—whether they belong to Sanders or to di Fiosa’s channeling—is palpable. I also found myself affected by the underlying theme of loss that permeates the book: the loss of a teacher, the loss of a tradition’s coherence, the loss that comes when a community’s founder dies before the community has matured enough to sustain itself. These are universal themes in esoteric communities, and they hit home for anyone who has watched a spiritual group struggle after losing its central figure.

Pros and Cons

What Works

• Historical perspective: The book provides a unique lens on Alexandrian Wicca’s internal tensions and its relationship to Gardnerian traditions. Whether channeled or constructed, these perspectives add to the historical conversation in meaningful ways.
• Intellectual honesty: Di Fiosa does not demand blind acceptance of the material’s authenticity. His willingness to acknowledge the limitations of mediumship gives the book a credibility that more dogmatic channeled works lack.
• Provocative ideas: The discussions about lineage, initiation, and the future of Wiccan traditions raise questions that the broader community would benefit from engaging with seriously.

What Could Be Better

• Inconsistent voice: The channeled material does not maintain a consistent tone or personality. Some passages feel genuinely distinct from di Fiosa’s own voice while others are indistinguishable from it, which undermines the book’s central premise.
• Needs tighter editing: Several conversations repeat the same points in slightly different language. A more aggressive editorial pass could have produced a leaner, more impactful book without sacrificing any of its substance.

Who Should Read This

This book is primarily for practitioners with an existing interest in Alexandrian Wicca, British Traditional Witchcraft, or the history of modern paganism. It will also appeal to anyone who takes mediumship and spirit communication seriously as a practice and wants to see how one medium approaches it. Casual readers or newcomers to witchcraft will find much of the context missing and may struggle to evaluate the material. Strict materialists and those hostile to the concept of channeling should obviously look elsewhere. If you approach it as a conversation starter rather than a holy text, you will get the most from it.

Final Thoughts

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A Voice In The Forest is the kind of book that stays in the back of your mind long after you finish it—not because it convinces you of anything, but because it refuses to let you settle on easy answers. I remain agnostic about whether Alex Sanders actually communicated through Jimahl di Fiosa. What I am not agnostic about is whether the book raises important questions about tradition, authority, and the future of initiatory witchcraft. It does, and it does so in a way that respects the reader’s intelligence enough to let them draw their own conclusions. I would not place it on a shelf of essential reading, but I am glad it exists, and I have found myself returning to certain passages when grappling with my own questions about how esoteric traditions survive the death of their founders. That lingering quality earns it a place in my library, even if not at the front.