To me, this is a comical picture showing a bunch of men climbing up a ladder while devils try to grab them or shoot them down — kind of like a *very* old-school Donkey Kong. To the 12th-century Byzantine artist who painted this icon, known as “the Ladder of Divine Ascent,” it was a true-to-life depiction of the workings of a spiritual dimension understood by Christian believers like himself, showing just how perilous was the human condition. Beset by powerful demons whose goal it was to knock out anyone they could, people must work with all their power to remain virtuous so they could enter heaven and avoid hell after death.
This spiritual world was one ordinary people never actually saw, but were constantly influenced by. Your actions had an end goal that can sound like the packaging on a modern video game — make it to heaven and avoid the demons! All your steps forward are difficult by nature, because going up that ladder requires work! Along the way, expect to receive encouragement from Christ and His angels, but setbacks from frightening beast-monsters that can permanently take you out of the game and throw your soul down into the abyss of hell!
Existence was definitely not about enjoying oneself, experiencing pleasure, or appreciating the journey in this worldview. These ideas played a prominent role in the minds of contemporary Byzantines, but the bias of the source skews how much we can know the degree to which this was typical – the icon was stored in the famous monastery of St Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, and made with a monastic audience in mind.
