Leo Martello, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetLeo Martello
American activist
Date of Birth: 26-Sep-1930
Place of Birth: Dudley, Massachusetts, United States
Date of Death: 01-Jan-2000
Profession: writer
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Libra 
About 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.
- During the 1950s, he was based in New York City, where he worked as a graphologist and hypnotist.
- 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. 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.
- He continued practicing Wicca into the 1990s, when he retreated from public life, eventually succumbing to cancer in 2000.
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