i think a lot about that guy in the early 1900s who went to bosnia to the last illiterate communities in europe and found out they were still reciting homer epic-length poems to each other from memory.
but when they became literate they lost the ability to remember the poems
The point of this painting is not to show that humans have one move left before checkmate as some priests claim; rather, it emphasizes the disappointment in the Angel's face for humans even agreeing to play a game with the devil. The loss occurred there, right from the start. One should never accept a game with the 'devil'.
Right from the start, you will notice the difference between the angel, the human, and the devil. We are in the same realm as the devil, who wants to keep us here in the materialistic realm, feeding us with technology. He no longer has access to the higher realms, the life force, and other parts of the soul, and he wants to ensure that humans remain spiritually blinded and lose their way to the higher realms.
That's the whole point of this illusion; that's why there are no differences between the human and the devil except for the clothes in this photo, while the angel has wings, symbolizing the higher states of the soul.
The painting was created by Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch, a close friend of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the greatest and most influential German writer, who was deeply involved in the occult knowledge and likely a Rosicrucian.