The Writings offer a tremendous amount of material on angels. The book "Heaven and Hell" offers detailed discussions as it describes heaven; "Conjugial Love" has much to say about marriage and romantic love in heaven; "Divine Love and Wisdom" offers insight into how angels in their nature reflect the nature of the Lord. So we'll offer some basics here and recommend those books to those who want more detail.

(References: Divine Love and Wisdom 231; Divine Providence 60-67)

Basically, the Writings say that if people in this life open themselves to the Lord, follow the Lord's teachings and let the Lord change their selfish desires into generous loves, they will go to heaven as angels after they die. If they don't, and instead embrace their selfishness, they will go to hell as evil spirits. The Writings also say that this is the only source of angels and evil spirits - they were all once people. There is no separately created race of angels, no fallen angel Lucifer who is now the Devil; that belief is based solely on a few lines of misinterpreted scripture.

This makes sense if you look at it logically. If the Lord could create beings that would live in love and harmony with him with no possibility of evil, why would He have bothered with us? Why not just make more of them? The fact is, such beings would not have any choice in their actions, making them no better than animals. And ultimately, if they were purely good then they would really just be extensions of the Lord, so in loving them He would be loving Himself. The reverse is true of the idea of Satan or "the" Devil. The Lord creates us from love so that he can love us, bring us to heaven and make us happy. For Satan to exist, the Lord would have had to create him, and it would be contrary to His essence to create something that was not intended for heaven, for joy, and for union with the Lord.

So angels were once people, who got to be angels by embracing the idea of being good and followed the Lord's teachings as best they could. The Writings make it clear these people can come from anywhere, from any religious background. Some churches may have doctrine that is closer to the truth than others, but the point of any religion is for people to desire to be good and try to be good using the tools they have.

When those people die, they go first to a place called the "world of spirits." There everyone who has recently died can learn about the Lord and spiritual life and prepare for heaven. There also, people's inner affections start showing on the surface; those who are ultimately evil start losing the ability to cover it up, and the love starts shining through for those who are ultimately good. As this continues and as people learn more, they naturally start congregating with others who have similar loves. This way evil people eventually take themselves to hell, where they can be with others who share their evil. Good people, on the other hand, can be prepared for heaven.

Two important things have to happen for us to truly enter fully into heaven. First, the Lord will push aside our remaining evil desires, so they cannot hurt us or tempt us anymore; angels are in a marvelous state of peace, with no active evil to trouble them. Second, we will each be led by the Lord to the perfect married partner, the one whose soul matches ours, the one we can love blissfully to eternity. All angels are married, because the marriage of a man and a woman represents the marriage of love and wisdom in the Lord, and also the marriage of the desire for good and understanding of truth in each of us. Because of this, we can only fully receive and return the Lord's love as married partners, and heaven is suffused with the sphere of marriage and the love of marriage.

The angelic couples will find their way to communities of other angels whose loves match their own, people with whom they can share the deepest friendships imaginable. They will have houses which reflect the character of their loves, and will be given work to do that springs from their loves and fills them with joy. Beyond that, their lives are much as life might be in this world, though free of sickness and aging and boredom and conflict. They have bodies that are human in form - no wings! - but a beauty in face and form that reflects the good loves they have inside. They eat and drink and laugh and sleep and have parties and games; all filled with the delight of mutual love.

The Writings tell us the work angels do is varied far beyond what we can imagine, though they only describe a few aspects. Among other things, angels care for people in this life, passing on to them true ideas and desires for good from the Lord. They also teach those in the World of Spirits, greet those who have just died, raise those who died as children, keep order in hell and do many other things.

We would finally note that there are three degrees of angelic life, based on the loves people embraced in this life. The first, lowest heaven, called the "natural heaven," is filled by those who are in the love of service. Angels there love to do what's right because they know it is right. The second, middle heaven, called the spiritual heaven, is filled by those who are in the love of the neighbor. Angels there love to engage their minds with spiritual questions to gain an ever-deeper understanding of how to be loving to one another. The third, highest heaven, known as celestial, is filled with those who are in love of the Lord Himself. From that love they have such innocence that they look like children, and they instantly perceive what is true, in all its variety, from the light of that love.

(References: Apocalypse Revealed 818; Arcana Coelestia 228-233, 454, 1802, 2551, 2572 [3-4], 5470, 6872 [2-3], 8747, 9503 [1-3], 9814 [2], 10604 [2-4]; Conjugial Love 44 [6-10], 52; Divine Love and Wisdom 19, 63, 71, 115, 116, 202, Divine Love and Wisdom 321, 322, 334; Heaven and Hell 75, 133, 266, 267, 304, 311, 415)

3316. 'Jacob boiled pottage' means matters of doctrine when massed together. This is clear from the representation of 'Jacob' as the doctrine of natural truth, dealt with in 3305, and so as matters of doctrine within the natural man, and from the meaning of 'pottage' as a massing together of such matters of doctrine. Indeed 'boiling pottage' is massing together; for the verb in the original language is strictly speaking the noun for 'pottage' - as if you were to say 'he pottaged pottage', that is, he massed it together. It is the first state in the joining together of good and truth that is described in this verse and in those that follow to the end of the chapter. The first state of one who is being regenerated - that is, with whom truth is being joined to good - is a state in which first of all matters of doctrine regarding what is true are massed together, without any definite order, in his natural man, that is, in the storehouse there called the memory. The matters of doctrine present there at that time may be compared to the undigested particles of some ingredient, not compounded with anything else but massed together, and may be compared to a kind of chaos. But the chaos exists to the end that they may be brought into an ordered condition; for with anything that is brought into an ordered condition chaos exists at first. This is what is meant by the pottage that Jacob boiled, that is, massed together. Those matters of doctrine are not brought into an ordered condition by anything within themselves but by the good that must enter into them; and the amount of good entering into them, also the essential nature of that good, determine how far they become ordered and the nature of their then ordered condition. When good first craves and desires matters of doctrine, to the end that they may be joined to itself, it is seen in the form of an affection for truth. These are the considerations meant by 'Esau said to Jacob, Let me sip now from the red [pottage], this red [pottage]'.

[2] Such considerations do indeed appear to be quite remote from the sense of the letter, but nevertheless when man reads these words and understands them according to the sense of the letter, the angels who reside with him at the time do not have any [natural] idea at all of pottage, or of Jacob, or of Esau, or of red, or of sipping from red [pottage]. Instead they have a spiritual idea of them, which is altogether different and remote from that natural idea. The idea of those persons and objects is instantly converted into a spiritual idea. And so it is with everything else in the Word, such as, for example, when one reads of bread there the angels do not perceive bread but instead of bread instantly perceive celestial love and things that belong to celestial love, which is love to the Lord. And when one reads in the Word of wine they do not perceive wine but instead of wine spiritual love and the things that belong to that love, which is love towards the neighbour. Accordingly when one reads of pottage or soup they do not perceive pottage or soup but matters of doctrine that are not as yet joined to good, and thus a disordered massing together of them. This shows the essence and character of angels' thought and perception, and how remote these are from man's thought and perception. If a person when in a holy frame of mind were to think as they do - such as during the Holy Supper - and instead of bread were to perceive love to the Lord, and instead of wine love towards the neighbour, his thought and perception would then be similar to the angels' who in that case would draw nearer to him till at length it would be possible for them to share their thoughts with him, though only insofar as good was at the same time present in that person.

[3] That 'pottage' or soup means a massing together may be seen also from what is said about the sons of the prophets and Elisha in the Book of Kings,

Elisha came again to Gilgal, and there was a famine in the land. And the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, and he said to his servant, Set on the great pot, and boil pottage for the sons of the prophets. And one of them went out into the field to gather herbs and found a wild vine, and gathered from it wild gourds his lap full, and came and cut them up into the pot of pottage, for they did not know [what they were]. And they poured out for the men to eat. And it happened, while they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out and said, There is death in the pot, O man of God! And they could not eat it. And he said, Then bring flour. And he threw it into the pot, and said, Pour out for the people. And they ate, and there was no harm in the pot. 2 Kings 4:38-41.

In the internal sense these words have an altogether different meaning from what they do in the sense of the letter, that is to say, 'a famine in the land' means a dearth of cognitions of good and truth, 1460; 'the sons of the prophets' means those who teach, 2543; 'pottage' facts badly massed together; 'flour' truth which is obtained from good, or that which is spiritual obtained from that which is celestial, 2177. Thus the description of Elisha throwing the flour into the pot, at which point it ceased to contain anything harmful, means that those facts, massed together so, were put right by means of spiritual truth from the Lord's Word - for 'Elisha' represented the Lord as to the Word, 2762. Devoid of this spiritual sense the story about the pottage and the change effected by the flour would not have been worthy of mention in the most holy Word. As with the rest of the miracles in the Word, all of which conceal what is Divine within them, this miracle was performed for the sake of representing those things.