3916. CONCERNING PARABLES. I recollect of having perceived, on a former occasion, that the speech of angels and angelic spirits fell into parables - a fact, however, which I did not then observe; as also that they fell into representations of gardens, fig-trees, and other things [usually seen] in dreams; so likewise, into feasts, as I saw them eating together, and this on several occasions, which it is here proper to mention, in order to its being known that the ideas of angels and angelic spirits are thus represented, and fall thus into parables, representations of gardens, and feasts, concerning which the Lord so often speaks in his discourses, and to which he so significantly likens [the things of] heaven. - 1748, November 9.