The word “sacrifice” means to give up something valuable, to experience a loss in trade for gain.
If we lost our own Sun, that would be a tragedy and life on Earth as it currently is would end.
If we lost a neighboring star, we just wouldn’t care. That’s why I wouldn’t call it a “sacrifice”. It could be a material component of a spell, certainly. But it wouldn’t be a sacrifice.
If you permanently Transfigure a ball of glass into iron with Crystferrium, you don’t think of that as “sacrificing” the ball of glass that you had. You’re just… using it up.
If someone performs the ritual to summon death then they lose a sword and a noose, unless they’re a particular sort of obsessed with the remnants of past crimes they wouldn’t care either except that they’d need to get new material components if they want to do it again. just as we’d have to pick out another star if we sacrificed Alpha Centauri A..
It seems to me that the term sacrifice is used simply to denote that even if someone wants their spell component back they can’t get it, whereas there is a spell to reverse Crystferrium if you find you prefer the original to the glass.
It might be. There’s no reason for magic not to have universal patterns that can manifest on both tiny and vast levels, and the ultra-specific instructions for how to brew any given potion would certainly fit the notion of “ritual”.
The word “sacrifice” means to give up something valuable, to experience a loss in trade for gain.
If we lost our own Sun, that would be a tragedy and life on Earth as it currently is would end.
If we lost a neighboring star, we just wouldn’t care. That’s why I wouldn’t call it a “sacrifice”. It could be a material component of a spell, certainly. But it wouldn’t be a sacrifice.
If you permanently Transfigure a ball of glass into iron with Crystferrium, you don’t think of that as “sacrificing” the ball of glass that you had. You’re just… using it up.
If someone performs the ritual to summon death then they lose a sword and a noose, unless they’re a particular sort of obsessed with the remnants of past crimes they wouldn’t care either except that they’d need to get new material components if they want to do it again. just as we’d have to pick out another star if we sacrificed Alpha Centauri A..
It seems to me that the term sacrifice is used simply to denote that even if someone wants their spell component back they can’t get it, whereas there is a spell to reverse Crystferrium if you find you prefer the original to the glass.
That’s an excellent point.
But if “ritual sacrifice” simply means “spell with material components which are expended”, then every potion ever brewed is a “ritual sacrifice”.
It might be. There’s no reason for magic not to have universal patterns that can manifest on both tiny and vast levels, and the ultra-specific instructions for how to brew any given potion would certainly fit the notion of “ritual”.