This angelic language, or conversation, is called illumination. Dionysius refers to this mode of speaking where he writes: "The lower orders of the Celestial Beings (the angels) receive the understanding of the Divine works from those above them in a fitting manner, and the highest are correspondingly enlightened in the Divine Mysteries by the Most High God Himself..."
"They [the angels] need neither tongue nor ears but with-out the help of any spoken word they exchange with each other their thoughts and their counsels. This form of expression, the angelic language, may seem perhaps too faint and indistinct to us who are used to material sound and words of mouth; it is however much stronger, clearer, and more perfect than any human language, even when this is used by the most learned and experienced of men. Our words of mouth are no more than symbols of the ideas we have in our mind and wish to manifest to others. Symbols and words are very often inadequate in expressing the full thought, or they are ambiguous or not well understood by the hearer. To be able to open one's mind and reveal the whole thought, as it is there, without the channel of symbolism, sound, and words, is a higher and better form of expression. Such is the wordless exchange of ideas, the language of the angels.
