The first thing the legendary Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky said when Arish Khan arrived at his Paris apartment was “Show me your cards.” He was referring to Khan’s tarot deck, which at the time, was the classic 1920s Rider-Waite one.

“When he saw it, Jodo told me, ‘That’s not the right deck for you,’ ” Khan, who fronts the punk-rock band King Khan and the Shrines, told OK Whatever.

The 88-year-old filmmaker — known for his surrealist 1970s movies, like Holy Mountain and El Topo — introduced Khan to the Tarot de Marseille, a deck from the 15th century that uses fewer cards (22 instead of 78), and has a sacred geometry to its art. Nixing those 56 other cards and leaving just the Major Arcana (or trump) cards, was akin to taking the joker cards out of a deck, Jodorowsky told him. You don’t need them and “it leaves just the essence.”

(Jodorowsky also taught Khan two other important tarot lessons. Never charge money for a reading and you can’t predict the future, because that’s bullshit.)

This all happened more than eight years ago, but it’s a day Khan remembers well. Not only did it influence the way he read tarot — he now only uses Tarot de Marseille decks — but it led him to create his own: the Black Power tarot deck.

Released in 2015, the unique and special deck does a lot of things differently from traditional tarot. Starting with the fact that it uses only Major Arcana cards — such as the Emperor, the Devil, and the Moon — it also only depicts Black icons from the 20th century (including 2 magicians, 1 comedian, and 23 musicians). Everyone from Billie Holiday and Screamin’ Joe Hawkins to Tupac appear on the cards as clever illustrations created by the British illustrator Michael Eaton. With guidance from Jodorowsky, Khan spent months deliberating over the people on each tarot card, trying to figure out who matched with what symbol.

“It’s not a bullshit celebration of rockstars or something like that,” Khan said. “It’s actually a calculated thing where I’m trying to express each card with the right person.”

Khan — who is Indian and from Montreal, Canada — was inspired to make the deck while working on the soundtrack for the civil rights documentary film, The Invaders. As a kid, he’d read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and learned about Black Power from his dad, who’d emigrated from India in the 1960s and “experienced a lot of racism.”

Even though Khan himself is not Black, he says he’s always identified with the movement, which he believes goes beyond the color of one’s skin.

“It’s about the struggle and that struggle is not only Black, it’s actually all sorts of things.”