What is the significance of the Chamber of Reflection in Masonic initiation?

The Chamber of Reflection is not part of standard English Craft Masonry, belonging instead to the practice of the French and Scottish Rites 1. Where it is used prior to initiation, it serves as a small room adjoining the lodge in which the candidate is enclosed alone to engage in solemn self-examination and quiet meditation 1.

Its somber furnishings and gloomy emblems are designed to evoke solitude and mortality, using darkness as a symbol of death 1. The purpose of this solitary enclosure is to ensure that the candidate reflects deeply upon the gravity of the step he is about to take, on the principle that one who enters into an undertaking after mature reflection is unlikely to turn back 1.