Spa­ce Savi­or Ort­hon and his Many Discip­les

The tele­pat­hic taxi dri­ver and the com­ing war

The night after the 20^th of Febru­ary, 1967, at 15 minu­tes past 1 AM in the Copen­ha­gen suburb of Brøns­høj, a 46-year old Danish taxi dri­ver named Knud Weiking sud­den­ly recei­ved a tele­pat­hic mes­sa­ge instructing him to extingu­ish his ciga­ret­te and listen care­ful­ly.

The voi­ce iden­ti­fied itself as belon­ging to Ort­hon, the re-incar­na­tion of Jesus Christ and the ruler of the enti­re uni­ver­se. Ort­hon tal­ked in detail to Weiking about how the real truth behind all reli­gions was human con­ta­ct with extra­ter­re­stri­als, whom pre-modern humans mistook for gods, angels and demons. Ort­hon also told seve­ral facts about Weiking’s own life, which only Weiking him­self could pos­sibly have known at the time. At 5AM Ort­hon had finis­hed his spe­ech, and Knud Weiking imme­di­a­te­ly woke up his wife to tell about his unusu­al expe­ri­en­ce.

Knud Weiking com­mu­ni­ca­ted tele­pat­hi­cal­ly with Ort­hon eve­ry eve­ning afterwards after the end of his shift, whe­re he would ask the extra­ter­re­stri­al enti­ty various questions about the sta­te of affairs on Earth. Weiking recor­ded the­se “chan­ne­ling” ses­sions on tape and wro­te down all of Orthon’s com­men­ta­ri­es. As a result, Weiking qui­ck­ly ended up with hours of recor­dings, as well as almost 400 pages of transcripts in various note­books.

Ort­hon spo­ke, among other thin­gs, about life on other pla­nets, the mecha­ni­cs of faster-than-light tra­vel as well as the futu­re of life on Earth. The core of Ort­hon’s mes­sa­ge to Knud Weiking, howe­ver, revol­ved aro­und an immi­nent nuclear war that would start with nuclear bomb deto­na­tions in China befo­re spre­a­ding to the rest of Asia and even­tu­al­ly the who­le pla­net, with a fle­et of spa­ces­hips being rea­dy to eva­cu­a­te as many Earth humans as pos­sib­le.

The Uni­ver­sal Link to Den­mark

Short­ly after Weiking’s expe­ri­en­ces began, he came into con­ta­ct with Bør­ge Jen­sen, who was then edi­tor of UFO-Nyt (UFO News), the mem­ber maga­zi­ne of SUFOI (Scan­di­navi­an UFO Infor­ma­tion — the oldest acti­ve UFO inve­sti­ga­tion orga­niza­tion in Den­mark). Jen­sen had alre­a­dy publis­hed seve­ral arti­c­les in UFO-Nyt about Richard Gra­ve, a Bri­tish real esta­te agent who had been recei­ving similar tele­pat­hic mes­sa­ges to tho­se recei­ved by Weiking sin­ce April of 1961, with Gra­ve having for­med an orga­ni­sa­tion named Uni­ver­sal Link to pro­mo­te them.

Richard Grave’s tele­pat­hic mes­sa­ges pur­por­ted to be from an enti­ty cal­ling itself “The Master”, and likewi­se revol­ved aro­und an immi­nent nuclear war with a fle­et of extra­ter­re­stri­al spa­ces­hips rea­dy to rescue the sur­vi­ving humans. Bør­ge Jen­sen had from 1965–1966 attra­cted a group of UFO ent­hu­si­asts who had come to live with him in the Zealand town of Borup. In Borup, Jen­sen made his living as a school­tea­cher and had recei­ved the nick­na­me “Spa­ce Jen­sen” from the local resi­dents, becau­se of his inte­r­est in UFOs and extra­ter­re­stri­al life. Weiking told one of his work col­le­agu­es about his expe­ri­en­ce a few days after, and the col­le­ague then refer­red Weiking to a mem­ber of Bør­ge Jensen’s circ­le, whom Weiking afterwards visi­ted in Borup.

It beca­me clear to the Borup circ­le that Weiking’s Ort­hon and Grave’s Master were the same being, on acco­unt of how similar their mes­sa­ges were, and Weiking qui­ck­ly beca­me the Danish medi­um of the circ­le. They then star­ted publis­hing a seri­es of pamp­hlets descri­bing Orthon’s mes­sa­ges, with tit­les like “The Voi­ce from Hea­ven” and “The Spi­ri­tu­al School of Borup”. Weiking then for­med an orga­ni­sa­tion to pro­mo­te Orthon’s ideas, named Uni­ver­sal Link after the move­ment Gra­ve had star­ted in the UK.

The couri­er Jør­gen Elle­sø, best known in Borup for clai­m­ing to be the re-incar­na­tion of Juli­us Caes­ar, joi­ned Uni­ver­sal Link as well and beca­me the third public face of Uni­ver­sal Link after Weiking and Jen­sen. Elle­sø beca­me famous for his stran­ge sen­se of humour and put­ting an emp­ha­sis on the re-inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bib­le as revol­ving aro­und con­ta­ct with extra­ter­re­stri­als whom anci­ent humans mistook for angels.

In the spring and sum­mer of 1967, Weiking deli­ve­red tal­ks about his chan­nel­led mes­sa­ges to pack­ed audi­to­ri­ums. Weiking attra­cted the big­gest fol­lowings in not just Borup, but in ano­t­her Zealand town named Dia­na­lund, whe­re pack­ed audi­to­ri­ums liste­ned to Weiking’s tape recor­dings of Ort­hon spe­aking through him and provi­ding detai­led instructions for exa­ct­ly what to do when the nuclear batt­le for Arma­ged­don began.

In the sum­mer of 1967, Danish aut­hor Klaus Aars­l­eff atten­ded seve­ral of Weiking’s mee­tings. Of all Orthon’s mes­sa­ges to Weiking, this one stood out the most vivid­ly to Aars­l­eff:

”This is Ort­hon with an important gre­e­ting to eve­ry­o­ne wil­ling to listen and under­stand. It is my will that 300 kr. will be dona­ted to our move­ment’s bud­get so that Knud and Bør­ge can pay for a fer­ry tick­et to Jut­land, whe­re others thirst after the important mes­sa­ge…”

The Last Christ­mas?

In the autumn of 1967, Ort­hon anno­un­ced through Weiking that the nuclear war would begin on Christ­mas Eve 1967, just as the Master had told Richard Gra­ve 6 years ear­li­er. In order to secu­re huma­ni­ty’s exi­sten­ce, it would be neces­sary for Uni­ver­sal Link to build a lead-lined bun­ker whe­re 70 preg­nant women (along with doctors and midwi­ves) could stay in securi­ty whi­le the ato­mic Rag­na­rok erup­ted aro­und them and the spa­ces­hips stay­ed rea­dy to eva­cu­a­te the last sur­vi­vors of huma­ni­ty. Ort­hon even spe­ci­fied the exa­ct dimen­sions of the bun­ker.

Weiking and Uni­ver­sal Link rai­sed 200,000 Danish Kro­ner to buy lum­ber, con­cre­te and lead pla­tes for the con­struction of a bun­ker near the Mid-Zealand town of Borup. (with the lead pla­tes being meant to insu­la­te the bun­ker from ato­mic radi­a­tion)

By the 22^nd of Decem­ber 1967, the bun­ker stood rea­dy pro­tected by 25 tons of lead plat­ing, as its con­struction had been finis­hed a coup­le days ahe­ad of the loo­m­ing nuclear apo­ca­lyp­se which Ort­hon had war­ned about. Even the New York Times prin­ted a story about the Danish UFO group and their dooms­day bun­ker!

On the 23rd of Decem­ber, Ort­hon sud­den­ly sent a new mes­sa­ge to Weiking. He com­man­ded the group to lea­ve the area and lock the door to the bun­ker, and told them that they with their con­struction pro­ject had shown their will to car­ry out Orthon’s orders, so he knew they were rea­dy to fol­low him. The who­le thing had just been a secret test of cha­ra­cter!

Ear­ly in the mor­ning on the 24th of Decem­ber, a local musi­ci­an named Aage Jen­sen cal­led Weiking on the pho­ne to talk about his plans for a per­pe­tu­al motion machine. It daw­ned on Weiking that the per­pe­tu­al motion machine was the same “nuclear ener­gy exchan­ge pro­cess” that Ort­hon had been tal­king about, and the pro­pulsion system of the flying sau­cers. Weiking had only mis­un­der­stood this “ener­gy exchan­ge pro­cess” as a war­ning about nuclear war, inste­ad of the inven­tion of a per­pe­tu­al motion machine.

As soon as Weiking rea­lized that, Ort­hon com­man­ded his fol­lowers to build such a per­pe­tu­al motion machine and a flying sau­cer so they could fly up to him and meet his spa­ce alli­an­ce. Knud Weiking then cal­led for a press con­fe­ren­ce whe­re he and Aage Jen­sen showed their con­struction plans for the per­pe­tu­al motion machine to the public and tal­ked about their group’s new mis­sion.

Unfortu­na­te­ly, back then the news­pa­pers would not see publi­ca­tion until the 26th of Decem­ber, so a thous­and dis­ap­po­in­ted peop­le had alre­a­dy shown up wai­ting out­si­de the Borup fal­lout shel­ter on the 24th, staying the­re all the way until mid­night.

When the news­pa­pers came out on the 26th of Decem­ber 1967, they were full of colour­ful sto­ri­es about the group’s new pro­ject and sharp cri­ti­cism of the Ort­hon group’s dooms­day prop­he­cies.

Most of Knud Weiking’s discip­les left the Uni­ver­sal Link move­ment afterwards, except for his clo­sest inner circ­le. Weiking con­ti­nu­ed to recei­ve chan­ne­led mes­sa­ges from Ort­hon and made qui­te the fortu­ne from dis­mant­ling the bun­ker and sel­ling the mate­ri­als, due to the high pri­ce of lead.

Big in cze­chos­lo­vakia

In the 1990’s, a Czech UFO con­ta­ctee named Ivo Ben­da star­ted trans­lat­ing the wri­tings of various Western con­ta­cte­es into the Czech langu­a­ge — Weiking’s among them. After Ben­da star­ted a move­ment named the Uni­ver­se Peop­le, which beca­me qui­te popu­lar in alter­na­ti­ve circ­les in Cze­chia and Slo­vakia during the late 1990’s and ear­ly 2000’s, Weiking ended up having a fol­lowing in tho­se 2 coun­tri­es — com­ple­te­ly unbe­k­nown to Weiking him­self.

In 2006 a 41-year old woman named Lot­te Niel­sen, who lived in a hip­pie com­mu­ne loca­ted aro­und the for­mer manor Over­drevs­gaard near Borup, one day found a stran­ger sit­ting in a rock­ing chair when she came home. The stran­ger was a Slo­vak con­struction wor­ker named Branjo, who had an inte­r­est in UFO con­ta­ctee cul­tu­re and moved to Den­mark from Ger­ma­ny spe­ci­fi­cal­ly becau­se he wan­ted to meet Knud Weiking, whom Branjo under­stood was the most popu­lar UFO prop­het in Den­mark! Branjo also knew that Weiking and Uni­ver­sal Link’s last known address was here in Borup, using the same PO Box as Lot­te Niel­sen’s hip­pie com­mu­ne.

As soon as Branjo had moved into the com­mu­ne, Lot­te Niel­sen had seve­ral UFO expe­ri­en­ces of her own. One eve­ning Niel­sen put her 2‑y­ear-old daugh­ter to bed, see­ing a row of glowing gre­en and blue lights appear over the daugh­ter’s blan­ket. When she told Branjo about the inci­dent, he replied that he had asked the extra­ter­re­stri­als to send posi­ti­ve ener­gy with the pur­po­se of hel­ping the girl fall asle­ep.

Later in 2006, Niel­sen saw 20 sphe­res of gol­den light ema­nat­ing from a ted­dy bear she had just bought for her daugh­ter. This occur­ren­ce repe­a­ted for seve­ral mont­hs, even after Branjo had left the com­mu­ne. Then, the UFO-like sphe­res of lights stop­ped ema­nat­ing from the ted­dy bear even when Niel­sen shook it. In the mean­ti­me, she and Branjo had also attemp­ted to find the cur­rent whe­rea­bouts of the UFO prop­het Knud Weiking but to no avail.

The saga con­ti­nu­es

The story of Branjo would not stop the­re. He would later on claim to be the rein­car­na­tion of Jesus Christ and in tele­pat­hic con­ta­ct with ano­t­her extra­ter­re­stri­al: Com­man­der Ash­tar, whom an Ame­ri­can aircraft mecha­nic named Geor­ge van Tas­sel clai­med to have met back in the 1950’s. (the afore­men­tio­ned Ivo Ben­da having trans­la­ted Van Tassel’s wri­tings into Czech in the late 1990’s) Accor­ding to Branjo, Com­man­der Ash­tar would soon make his exi­sten­ce public to the Earth peop­le.

As for Branjo, he beca­me known as a faith hea­ler in Nør­re­bro, whe­re he drew his own fol­lowing from the distri­ct’s home­less popu­la­tion. Many of Branjo’s fol­lowers began living in Git­te Jul and Jakob Vedels­by’s own hou­se.

Branjo now enli­sted Git­te Jul’s talent as a psy­chic medi­um to establish tele­pat­hic con­ta­ct with Ash­tar and com­mu­ni­ca­te with him on a daily basis, with Ash­tar spe­aking through Git­te. Sin­ce Branjo could not con­vin­ce Ash­tar to appear in per­son in Nør­re­bro as Branjo had pro­mi­sed his fel­low UFO ent­hu­si­asts back home in Slo­vakia, and many of his pre­di­ctions (like the one about a spa­ces­hip appea­ring over Copen­ha­gen) did not come true, the Slo­vak con­ta­ctee ulti­ma­te­ly retur­ned to his home coun­try.

In 2007 a Czech man would appear in Borup to search for the Ort­hon peop­le once again, only to come in con­ta­ct with Weiking’s grand­child who told him that Weiking died the year befo­re. The Czech pro­clai­med that he wan­ted to take over the Uni­ver­sal Link move­ment and moved home to Cze­chia again. Howe­ver, afterwards it’s been impos­sib­le to find out if anyt­hing ever came of this.

Final­ly — a pre­di­ction that came true

In 2014, three Cze­chs visi­ted Borup to wait for the second com­ing of Christ which they had been told would take pla­ce the­re through – you gues­sed it – tele­pat­hic com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Ort­hon.

One of the Cze­chs, a softwa­re pro­gram­mer named Miroslav Svo­bo­da, told the Danish news­pa­per Poli­ti­ken that he was genu­i­ne­ly sur­pri­sed how few Danes knew about Ort­hon, Geor­ge Adam­ski or Knud Weiking. Svo­bo­da also showed the news­pa­per edi­tors a note­book from the 1960’s, descri­bing a chan­ne­led mes­sa­ge from Ort­hon that appea­red to cor­rect­ly pre­di­ct Den­mark’s victory in the 1992 Euro­pe­an foot­ball cham­pions­hip!

Knud Weiking and his move­ment would later make an appea­ran­ce in two Danish novels publis­hed in 2006: Blue Bro­t­her by Ib Micha­el, which revol­ves aro­und the con­ta­ctee subcul­tu­re of the 1960’s; The Law of Humans, which Jakob Vedels­by wro­te as a fictio­na­li­sed acco­unt of his enco­un­ters with Branjo.

Com­men­tary

Danish main­stream media took a strong inte­r­est in UFO sigh­tings and con­ta­ct sto­ri­es back in the 1960’s. One case which the Danish media showed a par­ti­cu­lar inte­r­est in was the 1967 Sjæl­lands Odde case, one of the few clas­sic Clo­se Enco­un­ters of the Third Kind here in Den­mark, which hit the news­pa­pers all over the coun­try at the same time as Knud Weiking went public about his tele­pat­hic con­ta­ct with Ort­hon.

The sto­ri­es about the bene­vo­lent extra­ter­re­stri­als com­ing to rescue humans from the nuclear batt­le of Arma­ged­don must certain­ly have struck a chord with the gene­ral public when the Cuban Mis­si­le Cri­sis was fresh in living memory and the Cold War rea­ched ano­t­her boi­ling point as the Viet­nam War esca­la­ted. Ano­t­her point whe­re Weiking tap­ped into the late 1960’s Zeit­gei­st was his claim about Ort­hon being the rein­car­na­ted Jesus Christ and the Bib­le being a gar­b­led acco­unt of con­ta­ct with extra­ter­re­stri­als.

In this con­nection it should be men­tio­ned, that despi­te having the same name, gene­ral appea­ran­ce, and to a lar­ge degree also the same mes­sa­ge, Knud Weiking’s Ort­hon was not the same enti­ty as the Venu­si­an spa­ce­fa­rer with whom the late Polish-Ame­ri­can UFO con­ta­ctee Geor­ge Adam­ski (1891–1965) had clai­med to have been in con­ta­ct with. At the very least, Knud Weiking’s Ort­hon never men­tio­ned anyt­hing about being the same enti­ty as Adamski’s Ort­hon, and it’s a com­mon miscon­cep­tion in UFO circ­les that Weiking was in con­ta­ct with the same Ort­hon as Adam­ski was.

Anci­ent astro­nauts being mista­ken for gods had alre­a­dy been a popu­lar the­me in sci­en­ce-fiction for deca­des by then, see H. P. Lovecraft’s novel At the Moun­tains of Mad­ness from 1936 for a good examp­le, but the 1960’s were when the idea bro­ke into main­stream cul­tu­re. Examp­les inclu­de: The Star Trek epi­so­de ”Who Mourns for Ado­nai?” that aired on Sep­tem­ber 22 of 1967, whe­re the crew of the USS Enter­pri­se met the Gre­ek gods who tur­ned out to be suf­fi­ci­ent­ly advan­ced ali­ens; Art­hur C. Clar­ke’s 1968 novel 2001: A Spa­ce Odys­sey and Stan­ley Kubri­ck­’s film adap­ta­tion her­eof; Erich von Däni­ken’s alle­ged­ly non-fiction book Cha­ri­ots of the Gods that came out the same year.

Even the Bel­gi­an comic book hero Tin­tin met ali­ens whom pre-indu­stri­al humans had mista­ken for gods, com­ple­te with an Adam­ski-esque tele­pat­hic con­ta­ctee, in the story­li­ne ”Flight 714” which had been seri­a­li­sed in maga­zi­nes from 1966–1967 befo­re being publis­hed in a col­lected album in 1968.

The basic gist of Adam­ski-sty­le con­ta­ctee cul­tu­re, with fri­end­ly human-look­ing extra­ter­re­stri­als from advan­ced uto­pi­an civi­li­sa­tions com­ing down to Earth in order to warn us Earth humans against our destructi­ve ways, also had a clear forer­un­ner in sci­en­ce-fiction name­ly the popu­lar 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Select Sour­ces

• Ben­ny Gran­da­hl: Ort­hon-bevæ­gel­sen https://ufomagasinet.dk/orthon-bevaegelsen/

• Kate­ri­na Hav­li­cka: Ivo Ben­da prea­ched love to ali­ens, today he feeds birds in Slo­vakia https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/zahranicni/sekty-kulty-mesiasi-ivo-benda-astar-seran-vesmirni-lide.A161203_140049_zahranicni_kha

• Klaus Aars­l­eff: Hem­me­li­ge sel­ska­ber – 40 dræ­ber­kul­ter og sære sel­ska­ber, pp. 167–171

• Mar­tin Miko: The most bizar­re sect in Cze­chia https://g.cz/nejbizarnejsi-sekta-v-cesku-vzpominate-na-vesmirne-lidi-a-astara-serana/

• Odjit­ka Schli­chtsova: Ivo Ben­da is still in con­ta­ct https://info.dingir.cz/2019/10/ivo-benda-je-stale-v-kontaktu/

• Poli­ti­ken, 22^nd of Decem­ber 2016, pp. 1–2+4 & radio podcasts seri­es made about the Ort­hon move­ment

  Many thanks to Ben­ny Gran­da­hl a.k.a. “Mr. Ort­hon” for fact check­ing and con­sul­ting. Also thanks to Mar­tin Chle­bov­sky for cor­re­spon­den­ce about UFO cul­tu­re in Cze­chia and Slo­vakia.