The Lost Art of Prayers & Thoughts: A Progressively less Accurate* Historical Account

April = #MakeAWishMonth! 🌠 Did u know “thoughts & prayers” used to be “Prayers, Thoughts, Wishes & SWEARS”? 🤯 Ancient ritual got shortened & we forgot the important parts—personal commitment & ACTION! Make-A-Wish still does it right: hear story 🙏, think solutions 💭, make wish ✨, SWEAR to help 👊. Next time, don’t just pray—make a wish & take action! #BringBackTheSwear

Did you know April is Make-A-Wish month? April 29th marks World Wish Day, commemorating when seven-year-old Chris Greicius became the first recipient of a Make-A-Wish dream in 1980. What’s remarkable isn’t just this foundation’s incredible work, but how it unknowingly preserves an ancient tradition nearly lost to history.

The Forgotten Four-Part Ritual

Long before “thoughts and prayers” became a social media reflex, our ancestors practiced a four-part ritual called “Prayers, Thoughts, Wishes & Swears” (PTWS). According to fragmented manuscripts discovered in university archives in the 1960s, this process was once considered humanity’s most powerful tool for community problem-solving.

The Great War of 1914-1918 nearly destroyed this tradition. As young men left their villages for battlefields, the cultural knowledge-keepers became casualties, and the ritual’s final stages were gradually forgotten. What remained was shortened to “prayers and thoughts,” eventually flipped to “thoughts and prayers” – a well-meaning but incomplete fragment of the original practice.

How It Actually Worked

The complete process worked like this:

Prayers were never passive. They were active meditations seeking guidance toward solutions for seemingly impossible problems. Communities would gather, not to merely express sympathy, but to collectively focus their attention on understanding the challenge.

Thoughts involved deliberate reflection where ideas and possibilities emerged. People would share insights, perspectives, and half-formed notions, creating a collaborative web of potential approaches.

Wishes transformed prayers and thoughts into personal commitments. When someone voiced a wish, they weren’t idly hoping – they were publicly declaring their intention to make a difference.

Swears completed the cycle. The community would literally “swear” to support the wish through concrete actions. These weren’t casual promises but binding commitments that the community witnessed and upheld.

The Accidental Preservationists

The Make-A-Wish Foundation inadvertently preserved this ancient wisdom in its complete form:

1. They begin with awareness of children facing impossible situations.
2. They engage in thoughtful reflection to create meaningful experiences.
3. The children’s desires become formal wishes that create focus and purpose.
4. Communities mobilize and commit to making these wishes reality.

Each successful wish is living proof that this ancient process still works when implemented fully.

Rediscovering What We Already Know

The beauty is that most of us still naturally follow these steps when tackling challenges that matter:

1. We reflect and seek guidance (prayers).
2. We develop possibilities (thoughts).
3. We commit personally (wishes).
4. We promise action and enlist help (swears).

Next time you find yourself offering “thoughts and prayers,” consider completing the ritual. Share your wish – what you personally commit to – and make a swear about the action you’ll take. Because a wish, when spoken aloud among others who care, transforms from a private hope into a shared mission.

This April, remember that wishes aren’t just for children or birthday candles. They’re catalysts for change that begin as prayers, develop through thought, crystallize into commitments, and culminate in community action.

Sometimes the oldest traditions contain exactly the wisdom we need today.

*The following is based on actual historical documents. Not all of it, but a lot is.

Did you know that April is Make-A-Wish month? It’s true! April 29th is World Wish Day, commemorating the date in 1980 when seven-year-old Chris Greicius became the first recipient of a wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Little did most people realize that this modern charitable phenomenon actually draws from an ancient and powerful ritual that has been systematically watered down over centuries by a shadowy cabal of efficiency experts and greeting card executives.

The Ancient Four-Step Process That Changed The World

Before becoming the hollow platitude we all know and love to tweet today, “Prayers & Thoughts” was actually the abbreviated name for a sacred four-stage transformative ritual known as “Prayers, Thoughts, Wishes & Swears” (or PTWS, pronounced “puh-twiss” by ancient practitioners). History shows that virtually every major human achievement—from the invention of fire to the moon landing—came as a direct result of properly executed PTWS rituals.

The original process worked like this:

STAGE 1: PRAYERS

The ritual began not with passive sympathy cards, but with active meditation seeking guidance toward seemingly impossible solutions. Ancient PTWS practitioners would sit in “wishing wells” (those coin-filled tourist traps are just sad remnants of these sacred meditation chambers) and concentrate intensely until their brains began to physically glow. Historical records indicate that the human head once emitted actual visible light during proper prayer-meditation, a capability we’ve lost due to excessive smartphone use.

STAGE 2: THOUGHTS

Stage two involved intentional reflection where ideas formed and possibilities emerged. During this phase, ancient humans would experience “thought bubbles” (yes, like in comics) that physically manifested above their heads. Others could literally see and read these thought bubbles, making ancient society both extraordinarily productive and uncomfortably revealing. The invention of hats was directly related to people’s desire to hide their inappropriate thoughts about their neighbors’ oxen.

STAGE 3: WISHES

When prayers and thoughts crystallized into personal commitment, they became wishes. Unlike today’s birthday candle rituals (a pathetic commercial knockoff), ancient wishes were binding contracts with the universe. When you made a wish in 10,000 BCE, your commitment was so tangible that it appeared as a glowing star above your dwelling, visible to all community members who would then hold you accountable. This is where the phrase “wish upon a star” comes from, though Disney has systematically stripped it of all meaningful context.

STAGE 4: SWEARS

The final transformation occurred when wishes became collective action and binding promises. The community would gather around the wisher and literally swear blood oaths to help fulfill the wish. This is why we call promises “swears” – because they were sacred, community-binding commitments that, if broken, would result in being forced to wash your mouth out with soap (an ancient purification ritual that somehow survived into modern parenting techniques).

How The Great Corruption Occurred

So what happened to this powerful ritual that once built civilizations? The historical record points to three critical moments:

The Greeting Card Conspiracy (1846)

In the mid-19th century, Esther Howland, the so-called “Mother of the American Valentine,” created the first mass-produced greeting cards. What history books won’t tell you is that Howland was actually the leader of a secretive organization called “The Platitude Purveyors,” dedicated to replacing meaningful human connection with pre-printed sentiment. Their internal motto: “Why feel deeply when you can mail cheaply?”

The Platitude Purveyors systematically worked to condense the four-step PTWS process into shorter and shorter formats. Their breakthrough came when they realized people would pay actual money to have their complex emotions reduced to rhyming couplets written by strangers.

The Telegram Truncation (1902)

The second blow to PTWS came with the popularity of telegrams. When charged by the word, people naturally began shortening the ritual. “SENDING PRAYERS THOUGHTS WISHES AND SWEARS REGARDING YOUR CURRENT PREDICAMENT” became “PRAYERS AND THOUGHTS STOP” saving both money and effort. The Platitude Purveyors, who by now had infiltrated Western Union, intentionally made the word “SWEARS” cost triple to transmit, effectively eliminating the action component from most communications.

The Social Media Final Strike (2011)

The death blow came with Twitter’s 140-character limit. With users forced to condense their responses to tragedy, “prayers and thoughts” further contracted to “thoughts and prayers,” removing even the proper ritual order. More importantly, the platform made it impossible to include the crucial “wishes and swears” components. Users could express sympathy but had no room to articulate what they would actually DO about the situation.

This was no accident. Historical documents show that major social media platforms were secretly founded by descendants of the original Platitude Purveyors, whose mission evolved from “selling hollow sentiment” to “preventing meaningful action through character limitations.”

The Make-A-Wish Foundation: Keepers of the Ancient Flame

Miraculously, one organization has managed to preserve the original PTWS process in its complete form, though even they don’t realize the historical significance of their work.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation, founded in 1980, unknowingly reconstructed the ancient ritual:

1. Prayers: They begin with hearing about children facing seemingly impossible situations.
2. Thoughts: Volunteers and staff engage in reflection about how to create meaningful experiences.
3. Wishes: The children’s desires become formal wishes that create personal commitment.
4. Swears: Communities band together and swear to fulfill these wishes through collective action.

The astounding success of the Make-A-Wish Foundation isn’t just heartwarming—it’s historical proof that the ancient PTWS process works when properly implemented. Every time a community comes together to help a child’s wish come true, they’re unconsciously participating in humanity’s oldest and most powerful transformative ritual.

How It Actually Still Works Today

Despite centuries of corruption, the complete PTWS process remains our most effective tool for creating change. When faced with seemingly impossible challenges, people still naturally progress through all four stages, even if they don’t use the original terminology:

1. We begin with reflection and seeking guidance (prayers).
2. We develop ideas and possibilities (thoughts).
3. We commit personally to a specific goal (wishes).
4. We promise concrete actions and enlist help (swears).

The next time someone offers only “thoughts and prayers,” gently remind them they’re using the abbreviated version of an ancient transformative ritual. Ask them about their wishes and swears—what they personally commit to and what actions they promise to take.

Because despite the best efforts of the Platitude Purveyors and their greeting card empire, the power of PTWS remains within us all. We’ve just forgotten what to call the stages we naturally take when figuring out how to change something that seems impossible.

This April, as we celebrate Make-A-Wish month, remember that wishes aren’t just for children or birthday candles. They’re the essential third step in humanity’s most powerful process for creating change—one that begins with prayer, develops through thought, crystallizes into wish, and culminates in sworn action.

And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they’re probably working for Big Greeting Card.