There's probably a bunch of overlap and fuzziness around the terms, but to me a spell is more "mechanical" in "you do/say X -> Y happens", vs a prayer is more "

There's probably a bunch of overlap and fuzziness around the terms, but to me a spell is more "mechanical" in "you do/say X -> Y happens", vs a prayer is more "asking a higher being for some kind of support" (which it might grant or not). And in context of Abrahamic religions it's biased in that spells are "magic" and "bad" and thus what "the others" do that don't have the right religion.