The Ladder of Divine Ascent: is a twelfth-century Byzantine painting intended to illustrate an instructional book for monks, written in the sixth century by Saint John Climacus. Both the book and the icon are known as the Ladder of Divine Ascent.
Written by an ascetic monk with a reputation for great piety and wisdom, the book advised monks to renounce the world with its many temptations and vices and to ascend step by step toward union with God in heaven. The icon served as a visual illustration of that process. The monks are climbing the ladder of the spiritual journey toward God but are beset by winged demons representing various sins—lust, anger, and pride, for example—which are described in Climacus’s book. Some have fallen off the ladder into the mouth of a dragon, which represents hell.
WHAP Chapter 10 Doc Study Point of View