Red Door Magazine 23
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The inspiration for creating the Black Power Tarot<br />
came after a dream.<br />
A dream with none other than Alejandro Jodorowsky,<br />
who in that moment was just a visitor to the dream<br />
realm, but later became his mentor and friend, and<br />
whose participation in the Black Power Tarot development<br />
process helped Khan define the characters<br />
and imagery.<br />
“I was the first in line in a classroom, he had a basket<br />
of eggs, he lifted my shirt and smashed and egg on<br />
my chest – it was like I was being canonized”. An hour<br />
later a I was asked to do the soundtrack off “Schwarze<br />
Schafe”, a film by Oliver Rihs.<br />
“When I started the Black Power Tarot, I had this vision<br />
that I needed to tell the story of Tarot, the journey<br />
of the full thorough life understanding of the world,<br />
with the light of Black Power, and use the right people<br />
for the right cards – choosing only people who really<br />
followed a path of illumination”.<br />
So Tupac, of course?<br />
“That’s one of my favorite cards, one of the most<br />
feared cards. A misunderstood card. What’s amazing<br />
is, in this card, this person has chosen to tie himself to<br />
a piece of wood and hang upside down because he’s<br />
doing a meditation, and he wants to see the world differently<br />
from everyone else. And when he hangs on<br />
this meditation he’s not concerned about winning or<br />
losing, he’s just concerned about being, and swaying<br />
back and forth.”<br />
Nina Simone is also there, as the Empress. “The card<br />
is of this young woman discovering her sexuality,<br />
blossoming. A card about fertility and maternity”.<br />
The people on these cards have been chosen as to<br />
Jodorowsky’s lessons and the original Tarot of Marseilles.<br />
“I feel like Nina Simone had such fucked up<br />
relationships her whole life. She was a slave to her<br />
husband, who even scared the police. This guy was<br />
a scary mobster kinda guy and she was beaten and<br />
tortured. I feel like this affected her so hard throughout<br />
her life, that she never was able to go into the next<br />
level of Spiritual Mother, she was also kinda trapped<br />
in the role of the Empress. I feel like, since she was<br />
born, she was born with her hands tied behind her<br />
back… and still she managed to become a volcano”.<br />
Then there’s Marie Laveau, the High Priestess,<br />
the Voodoo Queen. “In this card, she’s reading<br />
the secrets of the world in a book, she’s sitting on<br />
an egg, contemplating her fertility, probably giving<br />
birth – They say this card is connected to the<br />
Hanged Man, who is supposed to be the child<br />
that comes out of that egg – This card is about<br />
compassion, empathizing with pain, finding a<br />
way out for them, finding help. People came to<br />
her when they were desperate, when even the<br />
law was against them.<br />
Her role was incredible. To provide light, strength,<br />
and essential help”.<br />
King Khan shares of an experience he calls “losing his<br />
mind”, soon after having met Jodorowsky and Lou<br />
Reed, and feeling out of nowhere like he was losing<br />
reality. Thankfully there was a family safety net and<br />
a good emergency care system, and now that he’s<br />
gone through the process of seeking help and being<br />
diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, he openly discusses<br />
these feelings, the fear of taking medication and<br />
conquering the paranoia of fearing losing himself.<br />
He discusses them openly to overcome the stigma<br />
of mental illnesses so common in our communities.<br />
After a couple of years being a zombie and trying to<br />
find himself and thinking he would no longer return<br />
to his previous creativity, one night in a pitch black<br />
room the song “Darkness” came to him. This is how<br />
art returned to him, and how, by his own confession,<br />
it saved him.<br />
“The Tarot is the path of the fool.” Khan adds, now<br />
at 42 from his apartment in Berlin, returning to the<br />
conversation of the tarot, after discussing the role of<br />
comedy in society as well as in his life, his performing<br />
style, and his personal story. “In the Tarot cards the<br />
fool is the joker in the beginning… and you kinda have<br />
to be a fool to follow a path of illumination. That has<br />
to be the first step. And being a fool is laughing at everything,<br />
but being able to for example make fun of<br />
the king, the authority figures, and still being able at<br />
the end of the day to dine with them and be at their<br />
level… that’s very important, because that’s ultimate<br />
freedom”.<br />
Tarot should be done using only the major arcana.<br />
“You can study and memorize the minor arcana, put<br />
those images in your head and that will help you understand<br />
the major arcana. But the work that we are<br />
doing in Tarot, which is not the manipulation of fortune<br />
telling, or enforcing their powers in you, Tarot<br />
is simply a language, so if you know every card back<br />
and forth, the sacred geometry, which direction are<br />
they looking…once you figure out how to look at this<br />
stuff you realize you can help people to understand<br />
their path of illumination.”<br />
“There’s a part of voodoo which I really admire, which<br />
is basically just the chemical reaction of anger and<br />
frustration turning into light. When you read about<br />
Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans, she used<br />
to do spells where she would cast a spell and put tons<br />
of chilli peppers in her mouth and chew them and just<br />
cry, so strongly, the energy is thrown out of you, and I<br />
believe in this strongly. I have seen it in practice”.<br />
Jodorowsky taught Khan never to charge for readings<br />
so he hadn’t until now, where he is at a position<br />
where he can ask for an amount and directly donate<br />
it to the causes he is passionate for:<br />
The money collected from his readings and<br />
t-shirts goes directly to Malik Rahim, community<br />
leader, from the Black Panthers in Louisiana.