288 Spiritual Astrology
widens the ring through the necessary unfolding of man.
He makes the process of unfoldment inevitable by virtue
of this ring of limitation. Man has to cross it by a proper
understanding of God’s creation and the ‘how it is’ of it.
One has to attune oneself with the ultimate fitness of
things to cross one’s own Saturnine nature. The time sense
of man is governed by Saturn and man is made to wait
by his own limitation. Delay, disappointment and
obstacles present themselves to the mind of man through
the effect of Saturn. Delay is nothing but an elongation of
the time of his own anticipation. Disappointment is the
‘not-achieving’ when expected. Obstacle is his own
impression of an external agency which prevents him
from what he regards progress.
Through this process man gains experience and
learns to wait. He realises that his expectations are not
according to ‘how it is’ but according to what he regards
as ‘how it should be’. The abyss between success and
failure is therefore his own creation. This effect of Saturn
determines a time but not the time of fruition for
everything. Mars makes man sow the seeds while Saturn
influences the time and manner of harvest. Saturn
withholds a portion of the workings of man beyond his
control until the ultimate fitness of things. The average
man views this as a limitation under the influence of cruel
fate.
Saturn governs the time sense of man and is also
called ‘Kronos’ the snail of time. Man experiences cycles
of time in his mind and his concept of these cycles
gradually becomes condensed as he expects more returns
from the objective world. These snail like converging rings
of the time sense in man make him feel helpless, until he
tries to look back and retrace his path. When limitation is