No. 107 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer

The Enkindler

In the Long Healing Prayer, Bahá'u'lláh calls upon God as The Enkindler, the One who lights the flame that neither illness nor despair can finally extinguish.

I call on Thee O Enkindler, O Brightener, O Bringer of Delight! Thou the Sufficing, Thou the Healing, Thou the Abiding, O Thou Abiding One! Bahá'u'lláh, The Long Healing Prayer · read the full prayer

What “The Enkindler” means

The meaning above is the plain dictionary definition of the word. What follows reflects on it as a name of God, offered for your own contemplation, and not as an authoritative interpretation of the Bahá'í Writings, which rests with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi alone.

To enkind is to set something alight, to coax a spark into a living flame. When this name is invoked in the Long Healing Prayer, it points toward a quality of God that is active, initiating, and intimate. God is not described here as a distant warmth felt from afar, but as the very source of ignition, the one who bends close enough to breathe fire into what has grown cold or dark. There is a tenderness in that image alongside its power.

In many spiritual traditions, fire carries layered meaning: it purifies, it reveals, it warms, it draws people together around its light. The name The Enkindler gathers all of those threads. It suggests that whatever capacity we have for love, for longing, for hope, or for renewed purpose is not self-generated. The flame was given to us. And the One who gave it can rekindle it when it gutters low, in times of physical exhaustion, emotional desolation, or spiritual numbness.

Placed alongside 'The Brightener' and 'The Bringer of Delight' in the same breath of the prayer, The Enkindler feels less like a formal title and more like a lived experience being named aloud. Something in us recognizes fire when we encounter it. To address God by this name is to acknowledge that recognition, to say, in effect, 'I know You as the one who has lit me before, and I turn toward You again.'

Calling on The Enkindler for healing

When illness settles in, whether in the body, the mind, or the deep interior of the spirit, one of its cruelest effects is a kind of dimming. Energy fades, hope becomes harder to locate, and the sense of being a living, purposeful person can feel remote. Calling upon The Enkindler in that condition is not a claim that the darkness will lift on our schedule or in the way we expect. It is more like turning the face of a lamp toward its source. We are not generating the light; we are orienting toward the One who can restore it. This is a posture of trust, not a transaction.

Those who sit with this name in prayer might find it helpful to hold the image quietly, a flame catching, steady and real, without forcing any particular outcome. Healing in the Bahá'í understanding touches body, mind, and soul together, and those dimensions do not always move in the same direction at the same time. Please do seek the care of qualified physicians and mental health professionals for medical concerns; prayer and medicine are companions, not rivals. What The Enkindler offers, held gently and without demand, is the assurance that the capacity for life, for light, and for delight has not been permanently extinguished, and that the One who first kindled it has not looked away.

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In the Bahá'í Writings

Questions about The Enkindler

Why does the Long Healing Prayer address God by so many different names in quick succession?

The prayer moves through a remarkable range of divine names, and one way to understand this is that each name opens a slightly different window onto the same infinite reality. No single name can fully contain what God is, so the prayer approaches from many angles at once, as if circling a great light and acknowledging each facet of its radiance. Invoking The Enkindler alongside The Brightener and The Bringer of Delight in one breath suggests that these qualities belong together: ignition, illumination, and joy are dimensions of a single divine act.

Is reciting the Long Healing Prayer a substitute for medical treatment?

'Abdu'l-Bahá taught clearly that illness can have both material and spiritual causes, and that material ailments call for material remedies alongside spiritual ones. Prayer and medical care are understood in the Bahá'í writings as complementary rather than competing approaches to healing. Reciting this prayer while also consulting competent physicians is entirely consistent with Bahá'í guidance, in fact, it reflects a whole-person understanding of what healing actually involves.

What does it mean personally to call God 'The Enkindler' when I feel spiritually cold or empty?

It is an honest acknowledgment that the warmth we need is not something we can manufacture on our own. Using this name in prayer is a way of admitting the dimness we feel without pretending it is not there, while simultaneously turning toward the only source that can address it. Many people find that the act of turning itself, even tentatively, even in doubt, is where something begins to shift, though the form that shift takes remains in God's hands rather than our own.

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