From Alejandro Jodorowsky And King Khan, awesome Black energy Tarot playing cards

Belfast-primarily based fashion designer Michael Eaton had been a fan of King Khan’s for years before sending an email providing his design services and products. every now and then, Eaton would send messages to bands he admired hoping to design their album paintings—but the response he received from the Canadian rock musician was unexpected. “He wrote back pronouncing he had a venture he’d needed to do for years and he thought I may are trying it,” Eaton writes in an e mail.

That challenge became out to be designing the Black energy tarot playing cards, a joint undertaking between King Khan and Alejandro Jodorowsky, the avant-garde filmmaker absolute best identified for movies El Topo and The Holy Mountain (to not point out a fantastical, over-the-top version of Dune that unfortunately never made it to monitor). in keeping with the usual Tarot De Marseille playing cards, the black power deck subs in black activists, comedians, musicians and different essential public figures for the twenty-two “trump” playing cards within the deck.

beneath King Khan’s art direction and Eaton’s hand, “The fool,” for example, transforms into a forlorn taking a look Richard Pryor lugging a standing microphone, “The force” becomes Tina Turner (and Ike the lion she’s taming) and sun Ra is—what else—”The solar” card.

“[King Khan] does [tarot] readings somewhat regularly so he was once truly into it and particular about what everything must look like,” Eaton says. “Which was excellent as I had no concept about the tarot, I simply kind of knew it used to be a thing. He despatched me some info and a in point of fact great checklist of musicians and activists he’d compiled, and i began making them.” Khan—who takes tarot cards on tour with him and does readings for everybody from The Black Lips to Lindsay Lohan—needed to sell the playing cards at his presentations. As Khan’s pals and tarot trainer, Jodorosky came onto the mission to supervise the production of the deck, giving the final approval for the design and the list of people featured.

Eaton’s version of the tarot cards are extra brightly-colored and have bolder lines, however otherwise the dressmaker adopted the standard playing cards almost all the way down to a tee. “I used the Tarot de Marseille as reference, so i’d roughly roughly draw a human doing no matter pose is on the actual card,” Eaton says. “I didn’t realize but it’s really particular, even all the way down to what method their eyes are looking. So it was once matched rather shut [to the original cards]. Then i would take a look at pictures of the individual in question and check out and adapt an iconic version of them into the medieval woodcut fashion of the cardboard.”

by means of highlighting more than a few extraordinary black figures all the way through historical past, however now not titling the playing cards with their names, the black energy deck objectives to get folks to discover—or re-discover—these musicians and public figures themselves. The awesome figures featured are recognizable handiest by their options and their emblems, like Richard Pryor’s red swimsuit or Little Richard’s piano keys. “We intentionally haven’t released the names, so it’s excellent theres a mystery about one of the vital cards and also you don’t know who they’re,” says Eaton, who also discovered some new names in the course of of constructing the deck. “It’s also a good way to make your report assortment better.”

The Black power Tarot playing cards are to be had for $40.04 on Eaton’s Etsy store.