“Many mystics and psychics predict that the coming Age of Aquarius, the water bearer, spells an end to organized religion, especially Christianity, and that it will combine the best elements of a pagan past and modern thought culminating in the rise of various independent religious groups the world over.” Leo Martello, Gay Liberation Front Member, Founder of Gay Activists Alliance, in Witchcraft: the Old Religion 1973
The late 1960s-early ’70s was a heady, transformational time for both gay and pagan activism – Leo Martello was a gay witch who served causes: he was a founding member of the American Gay Liberation Front, and an outspoken witch, raised in a Sicilian family tradition, who understoood how intricately woven together gay liberation and the pagan revival really are. His fellow Gay Liberation Front members did not necessarily grasp this vision however, and, like the lesbians who separated from the GLF after a couple of years because of the conservative politics and misogynist, patriarchal attitudes of so many of the gay men, Leo left the cause, in his case to focus on teaching paganism and to stand up for the place of the gay community within the modern Pagan world.
The Witches Almanac website informs us:
Leo was born in Dudley, Massachusetts on September 26, 1930. His father Rocco Luigi Martello emigrated from Sicily to the United States, settling in New England to farm a small parcel of land
At a very young age, Leo was told that he carried the physical traits of this maternal grandmother, Maria Concetta of Enna, Sicily. According to Leo, he was also told that he carried the same psychic abilities of his Grandmother. He would retell this story in his 1973 book, Witchcraft: The Old Religion. Maria was renowned in her area as a cunning woman, using folk magic to heal (and curse), as well as being an able tarot card reader. She was apparently so well known that local Catholic priests held her both in awe and disdain.
Martello relates that when he was 16 years old, his father informed him that he had cousins in New York interested in his special talents. On meeting these cousins, he was made aware that his grandmother was a Strega Maga (Great Witch) practicing La Vecchia Religione (the Old Religion) of the Siculi (ancient Sicilians). His relatives watched him over the years and once they were sure that he indeed had the talents of his grandmother, initiated him on his 21st birthday.
The Wildhunt.org quotes Leo’s friend Peter Levenda, an author of numerous books, including Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult saying: “As a gay man, Leo knew he had to live a closeted life […] or come out, but come out with an alternative lifestyle, and that meant an alternative religion, too…
“It was difficult for gay men and women to belong to covens that were largely straight due to the god and goddess motif that governed the rituals, which seemed based on a strict male/female polarity. A gay coven could still respect the idea of polarity and gender but in a more nuanced and sophisticated way… Leo knew that normative sexuality was not the universal that many in the movement thought it was…
“There is a long tradition in Pagan history of transvestism, of eunuchs, sacred prostitution, multiple genders, and of homosexuality in priesthoods from Asia to Mesopotamia to ancient Europe. Obviously, there were homosexuals in the world long before Christianity was born and in many areas of the planet where Christian missionaries were slow to arrive. Thus, there had been a place for homosexuals (and other LGBTQIA+ individuals) in religious rituals, religious organizations, oracles, shamans, and the like. Paganism – and especially Wicca, which allowed everyone to become a practitioner as well as a devotee or follower – was Leo’s natural element.”
From The Witches Almanac website:
Leo petitioned the Parks Department of New York City to hold a “festival” or as he was billing it, a “Witch In” to occur on October 31 in Central Park. The Parks Department initially approved the permit, subsequently revoking it on learning the focus of the celebration. Leo successfully sued and won the right to continue with his festival. His Witch In was immensely successful with over 1000 attendees. It was because of these victories that Leo would go on to found the Witches Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group for Pagans and Witches.
Martello recognized the need for a Pagan tradition that would respect and empower gay men, so in the late 1970s he and his friend and fellow Witch, Eddie Buczynski, founded the Minoan Brotherhood, described on its website as “a men’s initiatory tradition of the Craft celebrating Life, Men Loving Men, and Magic in a primarily Cretan context, also including some Aegean and Ancient Near Eastern mythology.”
LEO MARTELLO IN HIS OWN WORDS:
From Witchcraft: The Old Religion 1973
Another belief [in the pagan past] was that the ancient Gods and Goddesses were androgynous, possessing the sex organs of both sexes, thus able to reproduce themselves. There are countless carvings, engravings, paintings, and statues depicting the ancient deities as hermaphroditic. Such figures have been discovered dating from the neolithic age in Spain, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. A clay hermaphroditic idol was found in Yugoslavia and dated from the Bronze Age. The word itself is derived from Greek mythology: Hermaphroditus was a son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who while bathing became joined in one body with a nymph. There are many images of “bearded ladies,” including the Goddesses Diana and Isis as two examples: The Goddess Neith with a fully erect male organ, as was the Nordic Venus, Friga (or Freya); Venus, Aphrodite, Baal, Mithras Zeus, Adonis, Dionysius, and countless other deities were described and portrayed as androgynous.
In my book Black Magic, Satanism, and Voodoo, I wrote, “In the oldest records of India, China, Babylon, Egypt and Greece the first gods are represented as bisexual. The Greeks often depicted Apollo as both male and female. Bacchus was similarly described. Proclus, commenting on the Timaeus of Plato, says: ‘Jupiter (Zeus) is a man, Jupiter is an immortal maid.’ Citing further Orphic verse it mentions that all things are contained ‘in the womb of Jupiter.’
“In Cyprus, Venus, depicted as Aphrodite, some times had a beard! Diana or Artemis had characteristics of both sexes. Orpheus taught that since the gods possessed the generative powers to create all things, they were, of necessity, both male and female. A Babylonian tradition described the first men as having one body and two heads, one male and one female. A Hindu scholar drew a figure of Brahma, during the act of creation, making him bisexual. The Babylonian God Tammuz was consecrated a Qedesha (Kedesha) which is a sacred prostitute (Kings 19:24). Jahveh, the Hebrew God, is made up of Jah masculine and the second syllable from havvah, feminine. It comes from Yaw or Yah, the name of a prehistoric male-female moon-god venerated by South Arabian Semitic tribes The Jews tagged on the feminine root making it Yah-weh or Jahwah. The Christian Bible spells it as Jehovah because of an error in translation. The Books of Job and Isaiah depict Jahwah as having the characteristics of both sexes.”
From THE WIERD WAYS OF WITCHCRAFT 1970
Chapter 13 – The Borderline Bi-Sexuality Of Many Mystics
A Frequently Observed phenomena in the realm of ESP is that of bi-sexuality; The effeminacy of many male mediums and the masculinity of many female psychics. The truth-seeking public prefers not to consciously recognize this or it’s talked about in whispers. There is a repressed guilt-ridden awareness. “After all his personal life is his own business. If he can help me that’s all I care about.” And they’re right: The only criterion for judging any psychic is his merit. But for those who prefer intellectual honesty without conventional morality, or emotional discomfort, are objectively interested in this bisexual phenomena as a byproduct of ESP.
Transvestism, homosexuality, and bi-sexuality have an honored heritage in the history of mediumship and prophecy. In his book, Intermediate Types among Primitive 1914, Edward Carpenter has shown that there is a definite link between the homosexual temperament and unusual psychic or divinatory powers. The men were non-warlike and the women non-domesticated so that their energies sought different outlets from the general run of men and women. They became the initiators of new activities.
Havelock Ellis commenting on this in his Studies in the Psychology of Sex writes: “Thus it is that from among them would in some degree issue not only inventors and craftsmen and teachers, but sorcerers and diviners, medicine-men and wizards, prophets and priests. Such persons would be especially impelled to thought, because they would realize that they were different from other people; treated with reverence by some and with contempt by others. They would be compelled to face the problems of their own nature and, indirectly, the problems of the world generally. Moreover, Carpenter points out, persons in whom the masculine and feminine temperaments were combined would in many cases be persons of intuition and complex mind beyond their fellows, and so able to exercise divination and prophecy in a very real and natural sense.”
Now before the sensationalist jumps to conclusions that all psychics are either overt or latent homosexuals let’s get the facts straight. Medical science has proven that all men possess the secondary physical characteristics of women and the latter of men. That the so-called “normal” man is about 80% male and 20% female.
Psychiatrists have pointed out with monotonous regularity that there are many men who are predominantly feminine in their psychological make-up yet who are sexually normal. There are many passive, even “sissified” men who are not homosexual – to the dismay of their hecklers! And some of the most masculine of men, physically and psychologically, are homosexual. It’s the old cliche “All that glitters is not gold!” But all of us are bisexual in both our physical and mental constitution. When this bi-sexuality is highly developed, at least on the psychic plane, you have the makings of a mystic.
Anthropologists have shown that in every society, from the aborigines of Australia to the Eskimos of Alaska, bi-sexuality and homosexuality have existed. In Tahiti_men who dressed and lived as women were, called Mahoos. The Sakalaves of Madagascar choose young boys who are pretty, delicate and effeminate to be brought up as girls. They are called sekatra. The Aleuts of Alaska called theirs schopan, meaning girl-like. All of the American Indian tribes had girl-boys and many of them were selected as such when they were children. The Montana called the deviate a bote, meaning “not man, not woman.” The Washington Indians called him a burdash meaning half-man, half-woman. All of these wore female clothing, lived and acted as women, and were tribally accepted, respected, or at the least tolerated. What is of special note here is that the majority of priests, witch-doctors and shamans were of bisexual temperament, if not openly homosexual.
Without going into the whole complex realm of bi-sexuality and its causes but restricting it primarily in the areas of psychic significance we find a definite logic. The man who “possesses the soul of a woman in the body of a man” is inherently “one up” on his fellowmen. He can intuitively understand women much better than the average man, and at the same time identify with this same man. Without any sexual expression whatsoever the bisexual person elicits the most intimate of friendships from other men who cherish his understanding, tenderness, non-competitiveness. At the same time women sense a silent sympathy in him and intuitively can enjoy his male companionship without “having to play the part of a woman” and can confide in him without fear of betrayal.
Since it is generally agreed that a good psychic reading requires the silent co-operation of the client, the psychic must be attuned and in rapport with the deepest layers of the client’s feelings and thoughts. His predictive accuracy is based on this psychic rapport. The male medium who “thinks like a man” cannot give his best to troubled female clients. The female psychic who “thinks Just like a woman” can’t render a full service to her male clients. She is limited by her feminine feelings. And in all readings unconscious motives and emotions play a strong role. Far from being something picked out of the astral genuine psychism stems from the deepest reservoirs of man’s mind. To function effectively it must operate on a positive wavelength that is “in tune” with the client’s inner radar. When a psychic is bisexual in his mind (as opposed to physical expression with either his own sex or both) he is in a position to communicate with all clients, male or female.
Scientific investigations into the lives of men and women who pioneered new movements, cults and creeds reveal this dominant bi-sexuality, on both a physical and / or psychic level. Close scrutiny of the lives of prophets and mystics, of men and women of high intellectual attainment, support this. Creative visionaries, great painters and writers, philosophers, all who work closely with the inspirational-intuitive have this psychic bi-sexuality. From Biblical prophets to modern mediums this phenomena has been observed and recorded. Again I quote Edward Carpenter from his Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk, pg. 83: “It becomes easy to suppose of those early figures – who once probably were men – those Apollos, Buddhas, Dionysus, Osiris and so forth – that they too were somewhat bisexual in temperament, and that it was really largely owing to that fact that they were endowed with far-reaching powers and became leaders of mankind.”
In 1885 ethnologist Elie Rechus published his Les Primitifs (English translation Primitive Folk) in which he clearly showed the connection with homosexuality and the priesthood, and especially noted the Eskimo schupans who were both homosexual transvestites, visionaries and priests. Religious transvestism, conventionally accepted, the wearing of robes, descends from the prehistoric bi-sexuality of African witchdoctors, shamans, pagan priests and ancient modes of dress.
rainbow messenger 