§244 angels’ language 125
e. In angelic speech there is a harmonic, descending concord: 1648 , 1649 , 7191.
f. The spiritual or angelic language is within us, even though we are not aware of it: 4014 [ 4104 ].
The concepts of our inner person are spiritual, but while we are living in this world, we perceive
them in natural forms because we are thinking on the natural level: 10236 , 10240 , 10550. After
death, we have access to our deeper concepts: 3226 , 3342 , 3343 , 10568 , 10604. These then consti-
tute our language: 2470 , 2478 , 2479.
in Hebrew, in which language that word is soft and in either pronuncia-
tion is a vowel sound. We can also learn some of this from the vocabu-
lary of the Hebrew Bible, since the words belong to either a heavenly or a
spiritual category. That is, they involve either what is good or what is
true: the expressions involving what is good make ample use of the vow-
els U and O and to some extent A, and the expressions involving what is
true make use of E and I.
Since affections are expressed primarily through sounds, words that
use U and O are well loved in human language to express great matters
like heaven and God. Musical sounds tend in this direction as they rise,
when they are dealing with such matters, but not when they are dealing
with lesser things. This is why the art of music is so adept at expressing
various kinds of affection.
There is a certain concord in angelic speech that is indescribable. 242
eThis concord stems from the fact that the thoughts and affections that
give rise to speech fl ow forth and spread out in keeping with heaven’s
form, heaven’s form being what determines how everyone there associ-
ates and communicates. (See above, §§ 200 – 212 , on the way heaven’s
form determines how angels associate and the fl ow of their thoughts and
affections.)
The same kind of speech we fi nd in the spiritual world is innate in all 243
of us, but in the deeper part of our intellect. However, since for us it does
not come down into words that parallel our affections the way it does for
angels, we are unaware that we possess it. Yet this is why we have access
to the same language as spirits and angels when we arrive in the other life
and know how to talk with them without being taught.f But more on
this below.
There is, as already noted, a single language for everyone in heaven; 244
but it does vary, in that the language of wiser people is more profound
and more full of shades of affections and specifi c concepts. The lan-
guage of less wise individuals is less profound and not so full, and the
language of simple people is still less profound, actually consisting of