The speech of the celestial angels abounds in the vowels A (ah, as in father), and U (as u in rule). One may often determine from the Hebrew vowels in a passage which words belong to the class of celestials and which to the spirituals — i.e., whether they involve good or truth. The former use more frequently the sounds of O and U, for they have a full tone, and also occur oftener in the Third Heaven. (Heaven and Hell 241; True Christian Religion 278;, Spiritual Experiences 5112, 5620, 5787)

5112. About angelic speech

It is to be noted that when spiritual angels speak, their words, which are the mental images in their understanding, have an affinity with the vowels "e" and "i" and when they say "a" there is still something of an "e" that is, "ae" in it; and when they say "u" then there is something of "i" or "y" It is also to be noted that I was granted to know from this that when their speech falls into human speech, it falls into such words as have these vowels in them. But the words of heavenly angels have an affinity with "a", "o", "u", on account of which their speech falls into such words as have these vowels in them. For this reason when a person speaks with these angels, [the person's speech] is turned from words in which there are "e" and "i" to words in which there are "a", "o", "u". ¹

Footnotes:

5620. Heavenly angels have spoken with me about the Hebrew language, that all its letters, or syllables, have a correspondence, and that, in accordance with its bends and curves, they signify inward things in accordance with heavenly forms. I was given occasion to examine the letters from beginning to end, and certain words, and they said what the correspondence is, except for some rough letters such as [Hebrew: Daleth, Caph and Koph] ¹ and several others which are pronounced roughly. But they said that in the degree there is roughness in them, they do not correspond. And therefore, they said, in the earliest times they were not rough but soft, and that therefore in each of letters like this there is a point in the middle, and this point means that it is pronounced roughly, but without a point in the middle it is not pronounced roughly. All roughness pertains to spiritual matters and therefore points are in the middles of them.

[2] In addition they said, which I too have often noticed, that they [i.e., the heavenly angels] do not have the vowels i and e, but a, o, and especially u, and that y ² is intermediate between heavenly and spiritual. And because they are like this and only serve the sound, in the Hebrew language there are also no vowels as in other languages, but they are added by characters above and below.

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