Their habitations are exactly like our houses on earth, but more beautiful.  They contain chambers, with-drawing-rooms, and bed-chambers, in great numbers, and are encompassed with gardens and flower-beds.  Where the angels live together in societies the habitations are contiguous, and arranged in the form of a city, with streets, squares, and churches.  It has also been granted to me to walk through them, and to look about on all sides, and occasionally to enter the houses.  This occurred to me when wide awake, my interior sight being open at the time.

That it is by derelation from the Lord’s Divine Humanity that heaven, both in whole and in parts, is in form as a man, follows as a conclusion from all that has been advanced.

There is a correspondence between all things belonging to heaven and all things belonging to man.  It is unknown at this day what correspondence is.  This ignorance is owing to various causes; the chief of which is, that man has removed himself from heaven, through cherishing the love of self and of the world.  For he that supremely loves himself and the world cares only for worldly things, because they soothe the external senses and are agreeable to his natural disposition; but has no concern about spiritual things, because these only soothe the internal senses and are agreeable to the internal or rational mind.  These, therefore, they cast aside, saying that they are too high for man’s comprehension.  Not so did the ancients.  With them the science of correspondences was the chief of all sciences:  by means of its discoveries, also, they imbibed intelligence and wisdom, and such of them as belonged to the church had by it communication with heaven; for the science of correspondences is the science of angels.

It shall first be stated what correspondence is.  The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world; and not only the natural world collectively, but also in its individual parts:  wherefore every object in the natural world, existing from something in the spiritual world, is called its correspondent.  The natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world, just as the effect exists from the efficient cause.

Since man is both a heaven and a world in miniature, he has belonging to him both a spiritual world and a natural world.  The interiors, which belong to his mind, and have relation to his understanding and will, constitute his spiritual world; but his exteriors, which belong to his body, and have reference to its senses and actions, constitute his natural world.

The nature of correspondence may be seen from the face of man.  In a countenance which has not been taught to dissemble, all the affections of the mind display themselves vividly, in a natural form, as in their type; whence the face is called the index of the mind.  Thus man’s spiritual world shows itself in its natural world.  All things, therefore, which take effect in the body, whether in the countenance, the speech, or the gestures, are called correspondences.