Red Door Magazine 23

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.