His certification as an astrologer reads Tatsuhiro Percival Nakajima. Why? The gentle Japanese -- still coolly dressed for summer -- replies smiling: "Because I am the Fool."

Not because he is a fool (far from it) but because of the name's association with the most innocent of the English knights who gathered around King Arthur's legendary Round Table. Percival was unworldly -- so the story goes -- because he was raised in secrecy and security by his mother in the deep forests of Wales until his mid-teens.

In tarot, Nakajima explains further, the Fool is every man at the beginning of the journey from birth to death and then rebirth, an empty vessel in search of answers to all life's universal problems.