Since there are societies in heaven, and the angels live as men, it follows that they have habitations, various, like all else in heaven, according to the degree of love and wisdom in which they are principled. No words are like Swedenborg’s own on this subject. “Whenever I have conversed with the angels mouth to mouth, I have been present with them in their habitations, which are exactly like the habitations on earth called houses, but more beautiful. They contain chambers, parlors [conclavia], and bed-chambers, in great numbers; courts also, and around them gardens, shrubberies, and fields. Where the angels are consociated their habitations are contiguous, or near to each other, and arranged in the form of a city, with streets, ways, and squares, exactly like the cities on our earth. “I have seen palaces in heaven, magnificent beyond description. Their upper parts were refulgent as if they were pure gold, and their lower parts as if they were precious stones: some were more splendid than others, and the splendor without was equaled by the magnificence within. The apartments were ornamented with decorations which neither language nor science can adequately describe. On the south were paradises, in which all things were similarly resplendent; for in some places the leaves of the trees were like silver, and the fruits like gold, while the colors of the flowers which were arranged in beds, appeared like rainbows; at the boundaries appeared other palaces, which terminated the view. Such is the architecture of heaven that one might say it is the very art itself; nor is this to be wondered at, because the art itself is from heaven. The angels said that such things, and innumerable others still more perfect, are presented before their eyes by the Lord, but that nevertheless they delight their minds more than their eyes, because in everything they see correspondences of things divine. “The angels who constitute the Lord’s celestial kingdom, dwell for the most part in elevated places, or mountains; those who form the spiritual kingdom, on hills; but those who are in the lowest parts of heaven, in places which appear as rocks. There are also angels who do not live consociated, but separate. These dwell in the midst of heaven, and are the best of the angels. “The houses in which the angels dwell, are not constructed by hand, like houses in the world, but are given them freely by the Lord, according to their reception of good and truth. All things whatsoever which the angels possess, they hold as gifts from the Lord; and they are supplied with everything they need.” We thus learn that in heaven there are not external, physical, or mental occupations to support bodily wants, as in this world.