Well, naturally, this led to the game of taking Tarot cards and replacing the titles with Gene Ray quotes that would give the picture a completely different meaning. I no longer have any of the original images, but here's a quick reconstruction of one that I remember.
Eventually, this developed into the project of designing a whole Cube Spirit deck (Majors only), modifying both the images and the titles to illustrate Time Cube principles. The Nuclear Waste lady, became a student wearing an MIT sweatshirt and jeans; an evil educator was added in the background, looking on in approval; and the number of stars in the sky was reduced to four (because "You can't have less than four, you can't have more than four").
The Empress card was renamed the Indian President, inspired by this Gene Ray quote.
Ray was clearly talking about American Indians here, and there was no indication that the Indian president might be a woman. However, when I looked at the Rider-Waite Empress card, her microphone-like scepter and floral-print gown made me think of a photo I had seen of Indira Gandhi -- who I guess was technically an Indian Prime Minister, but whatever.
I no longer have any of these cards, but I remember that this one was closely based on the Indira Gandhi photo but modified so as to suggest an American president delivering the State of the Union address. The president -- looking pretty much exactly like Indira Gandhi, but with a forehead dot added for extra Indian-ness -- stood at a podium, flanked by two generic clapping politicans, with a huge American flag hanging in the background.
In short, I had portrayed the Empress as a female Indian-American president of the United States -- and specifically patterned her after Indira Gandhi, daughter of Kamala Nehru.
Look back at that screenshot of Ray's "Indian president" question and notice that the immediate context refers to race-mixing ("racial slop") and to the US becoming a "black nation." Kamala Harris is mixed-race and generally presents herself not as an Indian-American but as "black."
I haven't thought of the Cube Spirit Tarot for ages, but a few months ago, in August 2021, I posted "Copper Queen," in which I connected Kamala Harris with the Empress card for completely unrelated reasons. That post was focused on the slightly modified Empress card that appears in the Grateful Dead "Ripple" video, in which the Empress holds a yin-yang symbol in one hand. In that post, I included a screenshot of the Wikipedia article for "Copper" and noted that it featured both a Venus symbol (such as appears on the Empress's shield) and a yin-yang symbol.
Now take a closer look at the paisley-floral motif on Indira Gandhi's costume.
