belief is held by many in the world, and is prevalent among the learned, and to their surprise, even among the clergy.  The reason, they said, is that the learned, who were the leaders and who first concocted such an idea of angels and spirits, conceived of them from the sense-conceptions of the external man; and those who think from these, and not from interior light and from the general idea implanted in everyone, must needs fabricate such notions, since the sense-conceptions of the external man take in only what belongs to nature, and nothing above nature, thus nothing whatever of the spiritual world.{1} From these leaders as guides this falsity of thought about angels extended to others who did not think from themselves but adopted the thoughts of their leaders; and those who first take their thoughts from others and make that thought their belief, and then view it with their own understanding, cannot easily recede from it, and are therefore in most cases satisfied with confirming it. [3] The angels said, furthermore, that the simple in faith and heart have no such idea about angels, but think of them as the men of heaven, and for the reason that they have not extinguished by learning what is implanted in them from heaven, and have no conception of anything apart from form.  This is why angels in churches, whether sculptured or painted, are always depicted as men.  In respect to this insight from heaven they said that it is the Divine flowing into such as are in the good of faith and life.

{Footnote 1} Unless man is raised above the sense-conceptions of the external man he has very little wisdom (n. 5089).  The wise man thinks above these sense-conceptions (n. 5089, 5094).  When man is raised above these, he comes into clearer light, and finally into heavenly light (n. 6183, 6313, 6315, 9407, 9730, 9922).  Elevation and withdrawal from these was known to the ancients (n. 6313).

75.  From all my experience, which is now of many years, I am able to say and affirm that angels are wholly men in form, having faces, eyes, ears, bodies, arms, hands, and feet; that they see and hear one another, and talk together, and in a word lack nothing whatever that belongs to men except that they are not clothed in material bodies.  I have seen them in their own light, which exceeds by many degrees the noonday light of the world, and in that light all their features could be seen more distinctly and clearly than the faces of men are seen on the earth.  It has also been granted me to see an angel of the inmost heaven.  He had a more radiant and resplendent face than the angels of the lower heavens.  I observed him attentively, and he had a human form in all completeness.