50.  It has been said above that in the heavens there are larger and smaller societies.  The larger consist of myriads of angels, the smaller of some thousands, and the least of some hundreds.  There are also some that dwell apart, house by house as it were, and family by family.  Although these live in this scattered way, they are arranged in order like those who live in societies, the wiser in the middle and the more simple in the borders.  Such are more closely under the Divine auspices of the Lord, and are the best of the angels.

51.  VII.  Each society is A heaven in A smaller form, and each angel in the smallest form.

Each society is a heaven in a smaller form, and each angel in the smallest form, because it is the good of love and of faith that makes heaven, and this good is in each society of heaven and in each angel of a society.  It does not matter that this good everywhere differs and varies, it is still the good of heaven; and there is no difference except that heaven has one quality here and another there.  So when any one is raised up into any society of heaven he is said to come into heaven; and those who are there are said to be in heaven, and each one in his own.  This is known to all in the other life; consequently those standing outside of or beneath heaven, when they see at a distance companies of angels, say that heaven is in this or that place.  It is comparatively like civil and military officers and attendants in a royal palace or castle, who, although dwelling apart in their own quarters or chambers above and below, are yet in the same palace or castle, each in his own position in the royal service.  This makes evident the meaning of the Lord’s words, that: 

     In His Father’s house are many abiding places (John 14:2);

also what is meant by the dwelling-places of heaven, and the heavens of heavens, in the prophets.

52.  That each society is a heaven in a smaller form can be seen from this also, that each society there has a heavenly form like that of heaven as a whole.  In the whole heavens those who are superior to the rest are in the middle, with the less excellent round about in a decreasing order even to the borders (as stated in a preceding chapter, n. 43).  It can be seen also from this, that the Lord directs all in the whole heaven as if they were a single angel; and the same is true of all in each society; and as a consequence an entire angelic society sometimes appears in angelic form like a single angel, as I have been permitted by the Lord to see.  Moreover, when the Lord appears in the midst of the angels He does not appear as one surrounded by many, but the appearance is as a one, in an angelic form.  This is why the Lord is called “an angel” in the Word, and why an entire society is so called.  “Michael,” “Gabriel,” and “Raphael” are no other than angelic societies so named from their function.{1}