The Disappearance of Rituals and the Stone of Destiny
Once we Scots eventually get over the heinous crime of King
Edward stealing our Stone of Destiny in the first place, there is then a
controversial argument to be made for Scotland thanking England for keeping the
Stone of Destiny safe for centuries. As you could argue that the only reason
the Stone still exists today is because it was kept in England.
This is because there is a reasonable possibility that the
Stone may not have survived the destructive cultural revolution of Calvinism,
John Knox and the fanatical Covenanters.
For example, look around Scotland for all our ancient
manuscripts, relics and shrines: they were mostly all destroyed during the
iconoclast's year zero. We also forget that the Stone was used to crown our
Scottish Stuart kings’ centuries after it was taken.
Even when it was ‘heroically’ stolen in the 1950s, the
activists managed break it by splitting it in two, it had to be repaired. The
contemporary politicisation of this relic simply does not stand up to
historical reality.
Since then, the stone has been attacked by various vandals
and protestors quite a few times; once in 2023 and then again in 2025. With
lost fragments being discovered in cupboards at SNP HQ in 2024 and up to 30 odd
fragments being distributed among independence activist. Why mostly republican
and 'Enlightenment Scotland' Scots would want such an artefact, or what they
might do with it, is anyone's guess?
Even so, the claim that the Stone was safer down south, is
up for debate. You could equally counterargue that we just about kept the
Honours of Scotland safe for centuries (and safe from Cromwell) and that Black
Rod of Scotland was likely destroyed during the Reformation, while it was held
in Durham, not in Scotland.
However, perhaps a stronger and more convincing argument can
be made for the Stone only having any real value and true meaning when it is in
use as part of a coronation ritual. Rather than being stuck in a museum in
Perth, as the Stone is now.
In his book The Disappearance of Rituals, Byung-Chul Han’s
core claim is that ritual gives meaning through use, not display. Han argues
that rituals are practices, not objects. Their meaning arises from repetition,
bodily participation, and shared time, not from being observed as historical
artefacts.
Therefore, when something like the Stone of Destiny is
placed in a museum, it becomes an object of contemplation and information,
stripped of its symbolic efficacy. From Han’s perspective, a museum often turns
living symbols into dead exhibits and I would argue that this is all we've done
with the Stone by spending millions of pounds building a museum in Perth for it.
You could say it’s good for Perthshire tourism and business,
but this would be a cold economic argument rather than an emotional or cultural
one.
Museums are ultimately spaces of de-ritualisation and Han is
critical of modern spaces that prioritise visibility, explanation, and
consumption over participation. Museums exemplify this logic:
·
Objects are removed from lived contexts
·
Meaning is reduced to labels and historical
facts
·
Visitors become spectators rather than
participants
Or in other words, modernity replaces symbolic action with
informational display. Since we no longer have a distinctly Scottish Monarchy,
all modern secular Scotland can do with the stone is to hold it in museum for
display, detached from any true meaning, even for independence supporters.
As painful as it is, the Stone becomes immediately imbued
with more resonances and vibrancy, when it is used in a United Kingdom context.
Furthermore, Han also makes an important distinction between
ritual usefulness and modern notions of utility. Rituals are “useful” precisely
because they are non-instrumental — they do not optimize or produce, but
stabilize meaning and community.
·
It anchors historical continuity
·
It marks a transition of political authority
·
It binds individuals into a shared symbolic
order
In a museum, it loses this function and becomes merely “interesting.”
Han emphasizes that rituals structure time — they create
thresholds, beginnings, and continuity. A coronation is exactly such a
ritualised moment. Removing the Stone from that context contributes to what Han
calls empty, accelerated time, where nothing truly begins or ends.
Based on my reading of Han's The Disappearance of Rituals, I
would argue that placing the Stone of Destiny permanently in a museum weakens
its meaning, because it removes it from a living ritual context. I view the
Stone as most “useful” — in a symbolic, not technical sense — when it actively
participates in a coronation ceremony that sustains continuity, community, and
'shared time' as Byung-Chul Han would call it.
