A Spiritist Origin
Kardecist spiritism, the tradition founded in nineteenth-century France by Allan Kardec, holds that spirits can communicate through mediums, often producing written messages through a practice called psychography. The Prayer of Charity is understood within that tradition to have originated this way, dictated through a medium rather than composed by an ordinary author — an account that belongs to spiritist belief rather than to verifiable history.
Its Content
The prayer is addressed to God as a father of power and goodness, asking for strength for those undergoing trials, light for seekers of truth, and specific mercies for a series of figures — the traveler, the afflicted, the sick, the guilty, the orphan — before closing with a request for charity, faith, and simplicity of soul.
Adoption into Santo Daime
The prayer's widespread use among Brazilian spiritists and Umbanda practitioners made it a natural addition to Santo Daime, which itself blends Catholic, Kardecist, and Indigenous Amazonian elements. It is generally recited with the same emphasis on felt sincerity that runs through prayer in the wider Daime tradition, rather than as a fixed, mechanically repeated formula.