9 July 1974

Dear Dr. Velikovsky,

I got your letter of 3 July and was sorry to learn that in-between the two symposia you did not feel quite well. Thank you very much for sending me the program of “Velikovsky Symposium On Cultural Amnesia” . Each of the subjects is of great interest for me. Somewhere my own notes contain material pertaining to the themes.

In order to recover cultural amnesia the close thought manifests itself to study the cults and symbolic language of the primitives. This was actually done by J. Winthuis (Das Zweigeschlechterwesen, 1928). This reference, espec. p. 45, I mentioned to you, when you were here in Jerusalem. Winthuis writes among others: “Der Sinn der Kunst des Primitiven ist dem Europäer vielfach aus dem Grunde verborgen geblieben, weil er ihre Bildersprache nicht versteht” (p. 49). Nearly superfluous to state that most of Winthuis’ material, assiduously collected in the years before the First World War, was destroyed later by “Bilderstürmer” . Should you be interested and have some spare time you find material about the relevant disputes which were quite lively in the late twenties in Anthropos Vol. 25, 1930, p. 73: “Kritische Bemerkungen zu Winthuis’ Buch Das Zweigeschlechtersystem” . Ibid. p. 1085: “Vernichtung von Manuskripten” (!!!), in Archiv für Religionwiss. Bd. 29, 1931, S. 140, and Dtsch. Lit. Ztg. 52/2, 1931, 8. Nov., Heft 45, S. 2142 etc., etc. Archiv f. Religionswiss. Bd. 33, 1936, S. 363 refers in a footnote to Winthuis’ “Einführung in die Vorstellungswelt primitiver Völker” (1931), which so far I have not been able to get. This piece might contain indications about the connection of observations on comets by the primitives and their sexual conceptions.

I have not yet received Pensée’s 7th issue and regret to understand through your letter that the report there about the Symposium in San Francisco is deficient. Dr. Mullen owes me still some answer to my questions about the planned study center on Naxos. I feel that a more intensive exchange of views could be constructive.

Yours very cordially and with best regards to Mrs. Velikovsky.

PS The hostility against Winthuis went so far that he was “suspected” in the Germania (the paper owned by Franz von Papen, who was Hitler’s Steigbügelhalter in 1932) “als Anhänger der Freud’schen Psychoanalyse und als ‘Evolutionisten’ , wie ihm schon vorher ‘Pansexualismus’ vorgeworfen” [worden war].