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The inspiration for creating the Black Power Tarot came after a dream. A dream with none other than Alejandro Jodorowsky, who in that moment was just a visitor to the dream realm, but later became his mentor and friend, and whose participation in the Black Power Tarot development process helped Khan define the characters and imagery. “I was the first in line in a classroom, he had a basket of eggs, he lifted my shirt and smashed and egg on my chest – it was like I was being canonized”. An hour later a I was asked to do the soundtrack off “Schwarze Schafe”, a film by Oliver Rihs. “When I started the Black Power Tarot, I had this vision that I needed to tell the story of Tarot, the journey of the full thorough life understanding of the world, with the light of Black Power, and use the right people for the right cards – choosing only people who really followed a path of illumination”. So Tupac, of course? “That’s one of my favorite cards, one of the most feared cards. A misunderstood card. What’s amazing is, in this card, this person has chosen to tie himself to a piece of wood and hang upside down because he’s doing a meditation, and he wants to see the world differently from everyone else. And when he hangs on this meditation he’s not concerned about winning or losing, he’s just concerned about being, and swaying back and forth.” Nina Simone is also there, as the Empress. “The card is of this young woman discovering her sexuality, blossoming. A card about fertility and maternity”. The people on these cards have been chosen as to Jodorowsky’s lessons and the original Tarot of Marseilles. “I feel like Nina Simone had such fucked up relationships her whole life. She was a slave to her husband, who even scared the police. This guy was a scary mobster kinda guy and she was beaten and tortured. I feel like this affected her so hard throughout her life, that she never was able to go into the next level of Spiritual Mother, she was also kinda trapped in the role of the Empress. I feel like, since she was born, she was born with her hands tied behind her back… and still she managed to become a volcano”. Then there’s Marie Laveau, the High Priestess, the Voodoo Queen. “In this card, she’s reading the secrets of the world in a book, she’s sitting on an egg, contemplating her fertility, probably giving birth – They say this card is connected to the Hanged Man, who is supposed to be the child that comes out of that egg – This card is about compassion, empathizing with pain, finding a way out for them, finding help. People came to her when they were desperate, when even the law was against them. Her role was incredible. To provide light, strength, and essential help”. King Khan shares of an experience he calls “losing his mind”, soon after having met Jodorowsky and Lou Reed, and feeling out of nowhere like he was losing reality. Thankfully there was a family safety net and a good emergency care system, and now that he’s gone through the process of seeking help and being diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, he openly discusses these feelings, the fear of taking medication and conquering the paranoia of fearing losing himself. He discusses them openly to overcome the stigma of mental illnesses so common in our communities. After a couple of years being a zombie and trying to find himself and thinking he would no longer return to his previous creativity, one night in a pitch black room the song “Darkness” came to him. This is how art returned to him, and how, by his own confession, it saved him. “The Tarot is the path of the fool.” Khan adds, now at 42 from his apartment in Berlin, returning to the conversation of the tarot, after discussing the role of comedy in society as well as in his life, his performing style, and his personal story. “In the Tarot cards the fool is the joker in the beginning… and you kinda have to be a fool to follow a path of illumination. That has to be the first step. And being a fool is laughing at everything, but being able to for example make fun of the king, the authority figures, and still being able at the end of the day to dine with them and be at their level… that’s very important, because that’s ultimate freedom”. Tarot should be done using only the major arcana. “You can study and memorize the minor arcana, put those images in your head and that will help you understand the major arcana. But the work that we are doing in Tarot, which is not the manipulation of fortune telling, or enforcing their powers in you, Tarot is simply a language, so if you know every card back and forth, the sacred geometry, which direction are they looking…once you figure out how to look at this stuff you realize you can help people to understand their path of illumination.” “There’s a part of voodoo which I really admire, which is basically just the chemical reaction of anger and frustration turning into light. When you read about Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans, she used to do spells where she would cast a spell and put tons of chilli peppers in her mouth and chew them and just cry, so strongly, the energy is thrown out of you, and I believe in this strongly. I have seen it in practice”. Jodorowsky taught Khan never to charge for readings so he hadn’t until now, where he is at a position where he can ask for an amount and directly donate it to the causes he is passionate for: The money collected from his readings and t-shirts goes directly to Malik Rahim, community leader, from the Black Panthers in Louisiana.