Helltræf is an Old English/Anglo Saxon word meaning “Devil’s Temple” or “Hellish building”. We liked the sound of it and we wanted to co-opt a word the original christian-fascists of medieval Europe no doubt used to demonise people they wanted to either kill or oppress. We, the descendants of those oppressed, now embrace and celebrate that demonisation.
As to how you say it: Hell-traf with the traf syllable pronounced like the traf part of the English word ‘traffic‘ – the letter form is pronounced like this:
Æ (upper case) or æ (lower case) is called ash. It is pronounced like the a in ash.
Helltræf is an unincorporated association established in the UK but is active all over the world, wherever we see fit.
We only participate in, support or start campaigns that tackle bigotry and fascism or that help victims of these things, particularly where theist religions are involved in oppressive actions. Campaigns are operated on an anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-transphobia, anti-homophobia, anti-misogyny, anti-ableism, anti-colonialist and anti-ageism basis although individual campaigns may only concentrate on one of these things at a time (for example, if we decided to run a campaign to raise money specifically for Love Music, Hate Racism).
Does the world really need another Atheistic Satanic organisation? There are plenty after all. What’s the point of another one? We fundamentally disagree with the right-wing nature of Church of Satan and the owners of The Satanic Temple and so decided to form our own UK based Satanic organisation according to what we believe in. We also have siblings and comrades in various European as well as North and South American organisations and individual Satanists too.
We don’t have any interest in proselytizing or evangelising. We are what we are and we do what we do. If you want to apply, you’re welcome to – providing a community is important to us. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine too. There are, after all, lots of good reasons not to be a Satanist (and good reasons to be one too). You can read more about participation here.
We will, and in some cases already do, collaborate with other Atheistic Satanist orgs as well as orgs from other atheistic religions such as Atheistic Wiccans/Witches, Atheistic Pagans etc and will work with with any organisation of any type to further our antifascist agenda. If you are part of such an organisation, and if your principles match ours, then please contact us to discuss collaboration.
In accordance with our intention to use as much open source and creative commons licensed material as possible, the imagery we use comes from sources that match this ethos and we are grateful to these talented creators for making their work easily accessible.