When the news came that the Queen had died, an almost universal reaction was: “It made me sad, I was surprised, I did not know I would be so moved.” In this way, the Queen is woven into our lives and psyche. I have a theory that royalty fulfills our need for archetypes in our personal and collective psyche. Reading Carl Jung and understanding some of what he said about archetypes, I saw how royalty fit the bill. Those kings and queens, princes, castles and golden carriages!
Now, with the Queen’s passing ceremonies, I see how ancient rites and symbols are all wrapped in royalty. All that pomp serves a purpose and echoes British and universal history. Like the need to quickly declare the prince to be the King sovereign- quick – before any usurpers come along and claim the throne.
One of the most tangible and accessible symbols that is widespread, is the lowering of the flag. The lowered flag goes beyond royalty and is a way a community can mark a death, and show respect, sorrow and gratitude such as on Remembrance Day. And in Canada, when we finally understood the extent of the loss and death of First Nations children during the time of Residential Schools, the Maple Leaf flag was at half-mast for weeks.
I have very early memories of the lowering of the flag. Many people my age can remember the Coronation of the Queen, though I was very young, I also remember the death of the king, her father. I have mentioned that I grew up living on a boat, that was in England. And at the stern (back) of the boat, we flew the Red Ensign, the British maritime flag.
There was a bit of a hoopla around this, the flag had to come down at sunset and up again at sunrise. (This was not such an erroneous task as we could just take the flag pole right out of its socket, the flag rolled around the pole, and then the operation went in reverse in the morning.). When King George Sixth died we lowered that flag down the pole.
It is called the flag at half mast, but in fact, it is about a third down. So now, with lowered flags for the Queen, I asked myself for the first time, why and since when have we been doing this? Consulting monsieur Google, I see that this started as a maritime tradition in the 17th century to mark a death on the ship. (Well, you probably had to be an officer or the captain to get that honour. I don’t think the poor press-gang sods got anything special when they died of hunger, exhaustion or keel-hauled) The idea was to leave room at the top of the pole for the invisible flag of death to fly above it. Well, fancy that!
I look around and see, in Canada our beautiful Maple Leaf red and white flag at half-mast in front of schools, public buildings, police stations, city hall, law courts and people’s houses, all lowered in memory of the dear Queen.