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)

116. However, this calls for an explanation of how angels can feel and sense this as their own and so accept and retain it when in fact it is not theirs, given the statement that angels are not angels on their own but by virtue of what is within them from the Lord. The essence of the matter is this. There is freedom and rationality in every angel. These two qualities are there so that angels can be open to love and wisdom from the Lord. Neither of these, though--neither the freedom nor the rationality--belongs to the angels. They are in them but belong to the Lord. However, since these two elements are intimately united to angels' life, so intimately united that you could call them linked to their life, it seems as though they belong to the angels. Freedom and rationality enable them to think and intend and to speak and act; and what they think, intend, speak, and act as a result seems to be done on their own. This gives rise to the reciprocal element that is the means to union.

Still, the more that angels believe that love and wisdom are within them and claim them for themselves as their own, the more there is nothing angelic within them. To the same extent, then, there is no union with the Lord for them. They are outside the truth; and since truth is identical with heaven's light, they are correspondingly unable to be in heaven. This leads to a denial that they live from the Lord and a belief that they live on their own and therefore that they possess some divine essence. The life called angelic and human consists of these two elements--freedom and rationality.

This leads to the conclusion that angels have a reciprocal ability for the sake of their union with the Lord, but that the reciprocal element, seen as an ability, is the Lord's and not theirs. As a result, angels fall from angelhood if they abuse this reciprocal element that enables them to feel and sense what is the Lord's as their own by actually claiming it for themselves. The Lord himself teaches us in John 14:20-24, 15:4-5, 6 that union is reciprocal, and in John 15:7 that the Lord's union with us and ours with him occurs in things that belong to him, things called "his words."

3368. 'Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I tell you' means not resorting to facts but to rational concepts which, when enlightened from the Divine, are appearances of truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'Egypt' as facts, dealt with in 1164, 1165, 1186, 1462, and from the meaning of 'the land' here as rational concepts which, when enlightened from the Divine, are appearances of truth. 'The land' meant here is in fact Gerar, where Abimelech the king of the Philistines was, and 'Gerar' means faith, 'Abimelech' the doctrine of faith that has regard to rational concepts, and 'the king of the Philistines' matters of doctrine, see 3364, 3365. 'The land' therefore, that is to say, Gerar where Abimelech was, has no other meaning in the internal sense. For 'the land' or 'the earth' varies in meaning, see 620, 636, 1066, since it means the character of the nation whose land it is said to be, 1262, though in the proper sense it means the Church, 3355; and as it means the Church it also means the things that belong to the Church, that is, the things which with anyone constitute the Church. Consequently it means the matters of doctrine concerning charity and faith, and so also the rational concepts which, when enlightened from the Divine, are appearances of truth; for these appearances are the truths of the Church, and so its matters of doctrine, see above in 3364, 3365.

[2] Whether you speak of rational concepts enlightened from the Divine, or of appearances of truth, or of celestial and spiritual truths as these exist in the Lord's kingdom in the heavens, or in heaven, and as they exist in the Lord's kingdom on earth, or in the Church, it amounts to the same. The same are also called matters of doctrine, but this is so because of the truths they hold within them. The rational, both in angels and in men, has its being and is called rational from appearances of truth that have been enlightened from the Divine. Devoid of those appearances the rational has no existence, so that rational concepts are appearances. The reason it is said here that he was not to go down to Egypt, that is, not to resort to facts, is that facts have been dealt with already, in that Abraham's sojourning in Egypt represented the Lord's instruction in facts during childhood; see 1502.

[3] The implications of the arcanum that he was not to go down into Egypt but was to sojourn in the land of Gerar, that is, He was not to have regard to facts but to rational concepts, are that all appearances of truth that hold the Divine within them belong to the rational, so much so that rational truths and appearances of truth are one and the same, whereas facts belong to the natural, so much so that natural truths and factual truths are one and the same. Rational truths, or appearances of the truth, cannot possibly exist or manifest themselves except from an influx of the Divine into the rational, and by way of rational concepts into the facts that belong to the natural. That which is produced at that time in the rational is seen in the natural as an image produced by many objects reflected simultaneously in a mirror. This is how they present themselves to men and to angels also, though with angels the presentation of rational concepts in the natural is not very manifest, as it is with those in the world of spirits and the spiritual-natural realm, who therefore have representatives of truth.

[4] It is similar with men, with every one, for as stated already anyone who is governed by good is a miniature heaven, or what amounts to the same, an image of heaven as a whole. And because Divine Truth is unable to flow directly into the facts that are present in the natural man, but only - as has been stated - by way of rational concepts it is therefore said here, Do not go down to Egypt, but dwell in the land of Gerar. But as no clear idea of these matters is possible unless one knows the nature of influx, and also the nature of ideas, therefore they are in the Lord's Divine mercy to be dealt with at the ends of chapters, where experiences to do with influx will be described.