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)

267. The reason angels can accept so much wisdom is that their deeper levels are open, and wisdom, like any perfection, increases as one moves toward the deeper levels and as they are opened. ¹

In every angel there are three levels of life corresponding to the three heavens (see 29-40). People whose first level has been opened are in the first or most remote heaven. People whose second level has been opened are in the second or intermediate heaven. People whose third level has been opened are in the third or inmost heaven. The wisdom of angels in heaven is according to these levels; so the wisdom of angels of the third heaven vastly transcends the wisdom of angels of the intermediate heaven, and their wisdom in turn transcends that of angels of the farthest heaven (see above, 209-210, and on the nature of the levels, see 38).

The reason for these differences is that the elements of the higher levels are detailed, and those of the lower are general, the general ones being inclusive of the details. The ratio of details to generalizations is on the order of thousands or ten thousands to one, so this is the ratio between the wisdom of angels of a higher heaven and that of angels of a lower heaven.

However, the wisdom of these latter angels similarly transcends our wisdom, for we are engrossed in our bodies and their sensory operations, and these physical sensory faculties are on the lowest level of all. This fact enables us to see the nature of the wisdom of people who base their thinking on sensory information - that is, the ones we call sense-oriented people. Specifically, they have no access to wisdom, only to information. ² It is different, though, for people whose thoughts are raised above sensory matters, and even more for people whose deeper levels have been opened all the way into heaven's light.

Footnotes:

6948. And He said, Cast it to the earth. That this signifies the influx of the power of the Lord’s Divine natural into the sensuous, is evident from the signification of a “rod,” as being power in the natural, and when it is said of the Lord, as being the power proceeding from his Divine natural (of which just above, n. 6947) from the signification of “casting,” or “sending forth,” as being proceeding, thus influx; and from the signification of “the earth” as being man’s external (n. 82, 913, 1411, 1733), here his sensuous and corporeal, which are the outermosts, because the rod became a serpent, and by a “serpent” is signified the sensuous and corporeal man.

[2] By the Divine power of the Lord is here meant the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, for there is power in Divine truth, insomuch that it is power itself (n. 3091, 4931, 6344, 6423). The Divine truth proceeding from the Lord flows into every man, through his interiors into the exteriors, even into the external sensuous and into the corporeal, and calls forth everywhere things correspondent in their order; in the sensuous, things correspondent such as appear in the world and upon the earth. But as the things which are in the world and upon the earth appear otherwise than as they are, they are therefore full of fallacies; and therefore when the sensuous is in these evils only, it must needs think against the goods and truths of faith, because it thinks from fallacies; and when Divine truth flows in, it must needs turn it into falsity.

[3] That a man who is not elevated from the sensuous, but is in it and thinks from it, thinks from fallacies, may be illustrated by examples: The fallacies in respect to the life of man-that it is of the body, when yet it is of the spirit in the body: in respect to the sight-that it is of the eye: in respect to the hearing - that it is of the ear: in respect to the speech-that it is of the tongue and mouth; when yet it is the spirit which sees, hears, and speaks, through these organs of the body. The fallacies in respect to life-that it is permanent in man, when yet it flows in. The fallacies in respect to the soul-that it cannot be in a human form, and in human senses and affections. The fallacies in respect to heaven and hell-that the former is above man, and the latter beneath him, when yet they are in him. The fallacies that objects flow into the exteriors, when yet what is external does not flow into what is internal, but what is internal into what is external. The fallacies in respect to the life after death-that it is impossible except together with the body. Besides the fallacies in natural things, which give rise to the self-contradictory conjectures of so many persons.

[4] Who cannot see that fallacies and the falsities thence derived have dominion instead of truths, merely from the dispute which long existed in respect to the circulation of the blood, which though supported by so many experimental proofs, nevertheless long remained in doubt; and also from the dispute about the sun-that it revolved once a day around this earth, and not only the sun, but also the moon, all the planets, and the whole starry heaven; and also from the dispute which still continues in respect to the soul, its conjunction with the body, and its seat therein. Seeing that the fallacies of the senses have dominion in such things, although their true character is plain from so many phenomena and effects, why should they not do so in such things as belong to heaven, which being spiritual are not plain except through correspondences?

[5] From all this it can now be seen what is the quality of man’s sensuous, viewed in itself, and left to itself; namely, that it is in fallacies, and thence in falsities, thus is against the truths and goods of faith. Hence it is that when man is in the sensuous and in its light, he is in thick darkness in respect to the things of the spiritual world, that is, in respect to those which are in light from the Divine; and that the sensuous light is turned into mere thick darkness when the light from heaven falls into it. The reason is, that the truths which are of the Divine light cannot be together with fallacies and the falsities thence derived; but [the falsities] extinguish [the truths] and thereby induce thick darkness.