Leo Martello

Leo Martello (September 26, 1930 – June 29, 2000) was an American Wiccan priest, gay rights activist, and author.

He was a founding member of the Strega Tradition, a form of the modern Pagan new religious movement of Wicca which drew upon his own Italian heritage.

During his lifetime he published a number of books on such esoteric subjects as Wicca, astrology, and tarot reading.

Born to a working-class Italian American family in Dudley, Massachusetts, he was raised Roman Catholic although became interested in esotericism as a teenager.

He later claimed that when he was 21, relatives initiated him into a tradition of witchcraft inherited from their Sicilian ancestors; this conflicts with other statements that he made, and there is no independent evidence to corroborate his claim.

Martello was born on September 26, 1930, in Dudley, Massachusetts, being raised on a small farm rented by his father, the Italian immigrant Rocco Luigi Martello.

Following the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, the Martellos were forced from their land and moved first to Worcester, Massachusetts and then to Southbridge, Massachusetts.

It was here that Leo was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, but his parents divorced soon after.

Unable to care for him alone, his father sent Martello to the Catholic boarding preparatory school attached to Assumption College, Worcester, which was run by the Augustinians of the Assumption.

He spent six years at the school, later describing it as the unhappiest period of his life.

He studied graphology and from the age of 16 began making radio appearances as a graphologist, also writing stories for magazines.

Martello later claimed to have experienced psychic phenomena as a child, sparking his interest in occultism.

By his early teenage years, he had begun studying palmistry and tarot card reading with a woman named Marta.

He also later claimed that his father had informed him that his grandmother, Maria Concetta, had been a psychic known as a Strega Maga ("Great Witch") in her hometown of Enna, Sicily, Italy.

According to Martello's account, Concetta had worked as a folk magician and tarot card reader, and attracted the hatred and envy of the local Catholic clergy.

He also related that on one occasion, she had killed a Mafioso using magic when he threatened her husband for not paying protection money.

Martello related that when he was 16, his father told him that he had cousins in New York City who wished to meet him.

He proceeded to do so and – according to his account – they informed him that they were initiates of an ancient Italian witchcraft religion, La Vecchia ("the Old Religion").

During the 1950s, he was based in New York City, where he worked as a graphologist and hypnotist.

Based in New York City, in 1950 Martello founded the American Hypnotism Academy, continuing to direct the organization until 1954.

After identifying his possession of psychic powers, they initiated him into the tradition on his 21st birthday in 1951, making him swear an oath never to reveal the secrets of the La Vecchia.

Moving to the city, he studied at Hunter College and the Institute for Psychotherapy.

Martello never produced any proof to support his claims, and there is no independent evidence that corroborate them.

From 1955 to 1957, he served as treasurer of the American Graphological Society, and worked as a freelance graphologist for such corporate clients as the Unifonic Corporation of America and the Associated Special Investigators International.

He also published a column titled "Your Handwriting Tells" for eight years that ran in the Chelsea Clinton News, and supplied various articles on the subject of graphology to different magazines.

In the city, he also began to frequent the gay scene.

In 1955, Martello was awarded a Doctorate in Divinity by a non-accredited organization, the National Congress of Spiritual Consultants, a clearing house for registered yet unaffiliated ministers.

After beginning to publish books on paranormal topics in the early 1960s, he publicly began identifying as Wiccan in 1969, and stated that he was involved in a New York coven.

That year, he founded the Temple of Spiritual Guidance, taking on the role of Pastor, which he would continue in until 1960, when he began to focus on his writing and his new philosophy of "psychoselfism".

Martello corresponded with California-based Pagan Victor Henry Anderson, and it was at Martello's encouragement that Anderson established his Mahaelani Coven circa 1960.

In 1961 he published his first book, Your Pen Personality, in which he discussed the manner in which handwriting could be used to reveal the personality of the writer.

After the Stonewall riots of 1969, Martello – himself a gay man – involved himself in gay rights activism, becoming a member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF).

Leaving the GLF following an internal schism, he became a founding member of the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) and authored a regular column, "The Gay Witch", for its newspaper.

In 1970 he founded the Witches International Craft Associates (WICA) as a networking organization for Wiccans, and under its auspices organized a "Witch In" that took place in Central Park at Halloween 1970, despite opposition from the New York City Parks Department.

To campaign for the civil rights of Wiccans, he founded the Witches Anti-Defamation League, which was later renamed the Alternative Religions Education Network.

In 1973, he visited England, there being initiated into Gardnerian Wicca by the Gardnerian High Priestess Patricia Crowther.

An anonymous woman who had known Martello informed the researcher Michael G. Lloyd that during the 1980s, he had told her that he had never been initiated into a tradition of Witchcraft, and that he had simply embraced occultism in the 1960s in order to earn a living.

The Pagan studies scholar Ethan Doyle White expressed criticism of Martello's claims, noting that it was "extremely doubtful" that a tradition of Wicca could have been passed down through Martello's Sicilian family.

Instead, he suggested that Martello might have been instructed in a tradition of folk magic that he later embellished into a form of Wicca, that the cousins themselves had constructed a form of Wicca that they passed on to Martello, or that the entire scenario had been a fabrication of Martello's.

He continued practicing Wicca into the 1990s, when he retreated from public life, eventually succumbing to cancer in 2000.