London: The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1925 (1905). Large 8vo in original green decorated cloth with gilt title. 84 pages. Complete copy with all 58 illustrations, and including original frontispiece “Key to The Meanings of Colours” AND with an extremely scarce original dustjacket – protected in professional, removable see-through mylar jacket. Name of previous owner to free front endpaper (Georg Hall) and a small neat stamp to innercover (“Pellucidar, Berkeley”). Inside clean and all pages are bright. Beautiful clear and deep printing of all the color plates. Overall an attractive well preserved copy

Very early printing (= First edition, 3rd printing) of “Thought-Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation” by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater the long overlooked foundational pillar in art history contains visualization of thoughts, experiences, emotions and music. Drawings of the “thought-forms” were performed by John Varley Jr. (grandson of the painter John Varley), Prince, and McFarlane. Annie Besant (1847-1933) was one of the leading persons in the Theosophical Society. After the death of Helena Blavatsky she worked together with Charles Webster Leadbeater. In 1907 she beacame president of the Theosophical Society. “Though-Forms” can be said to have had a large influence on modern art. “It suggested, to a world moving rapidly beyond the literalism of Victorian art, the expression in painting of surreal forms and forces underlying, but different from, the visible world.” Thought-Forms demonstrated how the symbolism of “astral colors and forms” can express the specificity of “certain soul’s and mental states.” It had a great influence on artistst like Hilma af Klint and Kandinsky as one of the essential factors that led to the “genius opening of new perspectives for painting and as the art critic Kramer has pointed, “what is particularly striking about the outlook of the artists primarily responsible for creating abstraction is their espousal of occult doctrine.” Yeats, Eliot, Malevich, Kandinsky, and Mondrian were charmed by Theosophy. In the first decades of the twentieth century, it was a widespread “component of Western cultural life”.Thus, Besant and Leadbetter had played, summed up Breen, “a small but intriguing role in shaping the globalized culture… which weaves together East and West, mysticism and rationalism, sound and sight.”