Our late Queen symbolised the values and virtues we uphold better than any written constitution could, argues Mark Vernon

It’s said that people would often dream of the Queen. I did, and when I was younger I used to wonder what it would be like to have every moment of the day scheduled for you. A cup of tea arrives at 7am as the curtains are drawn back. A bath is run at 7.15am. Breakfast appears at 7.30am. To the stables, 8am. I was fascinated by living according to such a pattern. I envied Her Majesty.

The fantasy appealed to a strong desire for meaning and purpose. How wonderful to be the Queen, I reasoned, when each part of the day is for something, and connected not just to a role but a symbol. Even an idle hand-wave could become a blessing.

She was embedded in a network of signs. Her being radiated life, not just to her family and friends, like your and my being does, but to an entire time and place.

My early fantasies morphed into a love of the presence she brought. And I think that matters.

Consider this story, told by the psychologist Abraham Maslow. He was an academic and, one day, was taking part in a graduation ceremony. Such formal occasions were inclined to bore him. Silly rituals, he secretly thought.

Only, on that day, his perceptions radically altered. Suddenly, he didn’t only see a procession of professors and students, dressed in bright silks and funny garb. He saw a stream of intelligence and talent flowing past him. The current reached back to the great historic figures who founded his discipline. It reached forward to the generations of innovators and investigators to come.

The vision was vivid, though not an hallucination. Rather, the performance of the ceremony displayed the inner meaning of university life. The ritual showed a particular manifestation of human questing. Suddenly, Maslow understood that there was nothing silly about the procession. He was committed to what was unfolding before him.

Monarchy is not the only way to appreciate the deeper currents of national life. Think of how Americans respect the flag and how the eternal flame is rekindled every day under the Arc de Triomphe in France. There is also the dignity of office, which means it’s not only what a prime minister does that matters, but how they do it.

Monarchy is an ancient option in the UK. Think of its symbols. The crown, for example, represents transcendental ideals. Justice is one of its transcendental meanings — described in such a way because justice exists as much as an idea as an actuality. In practice, the law regularly fails to deliver what’s fair and right. There will be miscarriages of justice. There will be instances in which injustices fall beyond the reach of the law. Given these failures, a society needs ways to ensure it can continue to think of itself as flourishing and marked by goodwill and integrity. Part of the role of the crown is to keep the flame of such virtues alight.

A crown itself is a fascinating symbol. The diadem placed on the royal head is circular like the sun and usually decorated with foliate elements, echoing the sun’s coronal rays. In being crowned, the monarch is being identified with the supreme icon provided by nature of all that’s good and needed for living – light, illumination, warmth. It’s why even in a secular age, kings and queens possess a divine aura, though it’s readily confused with celebrity.

“Without the capacity for symbolic transcendence, for seeing the realm of daily life in terms of a realm beyond it, one would be trapped in a world of what has been called dreadful immanence,” writes the sociologist Robert Bellah in his book Religion in Human Evolution. The beyond is vital for human beings. Without it, we would not be alive to aspirations and ideals. We would be less than human.

Many react against the role that monarchy plays in preserving such dreams, of course, which is understandable. It is a symbol that projects real power. So any protest against it must carry equal gravity to make sense. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, the prophets speak with the voice that objects to the king. Figures like Isaiah were not worried about modern concerns, such as citizenship and democracy. Their anxiety was that a monarch could cease to be a symbol and become an idol. They argued that it’s better to rely on God directly, much as today republicans might say it’s more mature to celebrate values without archaic mediation. Better to have principles like liberty, fraternity and equality spelt out in a written constitution.

Personally, I would prefer Brits to keep the monarchy. There is value in having a person as part of the symbol and not solely focusing on abstract ideals, which can become depersonalised and valued only for their utility. The monarch makes for what might be called cognitive flexibility, which is why the Queen worked hard to change over the course of her reign. Modernising is part of maintaining the links with the beyond that royalty transmits.

Whatever you make of that, the Platinum Jubilee was a moment to ponder those aspects of the reality that shape our lives which lie beyond our immediate grasp. Symbols and rituals are a way of sustaining contact with transcendence.

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