The mirror is placed like an eye in the centre of the composition, which adds to the mystery and the strangeness.

It is just 3 inches wide — yet it reflects the entire room in immense detail.

Who are the two people seen entering the room?

The mirror has the effect of compressing the space but expanding it at the same time, and bringing the world outside the picture frame into the heart of the composition.

The painting is replete with symbolic items such as a dog, which is an integral part of the tarots’ first major arcana card, the Fool.

The painting is a transition piece between Hierarchical Scale and the Renaissance.

In the Hierarchical Scale, Western art showed devotion to religion. As the churches held wealth they funded the arts. The religious aspect is still present in this piece, just not as a triptych would have shown.

It could be said that a Mystery School is akin to the mirror in the painting.

Mystery Schools have been a feature of human spirituality for thousands of years. These centres of learning have fulfilled our needs to find meaning and the urge to uncover connections between ourselves and nature, our role in the workings of the Universe, our spiritual connections to ourselves, our fellow beings and to the divine. They delve into the psyches of the initiates, urging them to probe their belief systems, often shocking them into a new sense of awareness and urgency to live life to the fullest.

Environmental lawyer Gus Speth said:

I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change, I thought that with thirty years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy. . . and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don’t know how to do that.

The depth psychologist Bill Plotkin left the narrow confines of academia to find his calling as a wilderness guide who assists people in discovering their uniqueness and clarify what will benefit their communities when they return to everyday life. Mystery schools of all shapes and sizes are starting to emerge as wayshowers in an era where we recognise the limitations of technology and rationalism. Plotkin asserts that:

During our current era of cultural collapse, we must create contemporary forms of mystery schools. When there is an absence or dearth of healthy, mature cultures to serve as the social and spiritual environment for the individual journey of soul initiation, we must create independent social and spiritual settings that serve as greenhouses for engendering and nurturing the seeds of cultural renaissance, seeds that emerge from revelatory experience. These mystery schools must be led by Adults and Elders who’ve been called by Mystery to serve as soul-initiation guides.

California’s Harbin Hot Springs core principles include respecting the earth, facilitating connection and creating a place of beauty and inspiration.

Over the years I’ve derived tremendous value from learning and training at places like Harbin Hot Springs, Connection as a Way of Life, Rewilding Programs, Rites of Passage work, Parsifal College and Nature Care College to name a few. These experiences convinced me about the benefits of these centres and need for more like them. Having not found a mystery school equivalent in Australia, I founded Polaris to offer training and one-on-one intensives with such a focus.