Ritual

Ritual spells are a way of performing magic. It is contrasted in the text with "an invocation"^[1][2], and, presumably, unstructured magic is also excluded from the definition of a ritual spell.

• Can require material aids which are not the target of the spell (such as a spell formula circle made of salt and quartz dust^[2]).
• Can take a lot more time than an ordinary invocation. For example, some soul protection rituals are stated by Alanic to take up to two hours^[2].
• Can sometimes work around the requirement of the caster having soul perception (or even awareness of own soul); however, the cost is greatly increased casting time^[2].
• Presumably, can allow multiple mages to cast it, as normally, shaping another mage's personal mana is extremely difficult^[3].

See Enhancement ritual.

• Teleportation rituals (see there for more). They allow greater range than normal teleportation spells.
• Transformation rituals^[4].
• Marker tracking ritual, used by Zorian to track Zach (uses a ritual circle drawn with salt and powdered quartz)^[2].
• A ritual designed to enhance awareness of one's soul, by ejecting it from the body and attaching it to a magical brain without any senses so there's no distractions, but tethering it so it cannot move to the afterlife^[5].
• A ritual to release Panaxeth designed by the cultists. Requires sacrifice of shifter children.^[6]
• A ritual for exiting the time loop. The ritual setup is somewhat similar to the above one, but uses the Sovereign Gate instead of children.^[7]

• Ritual killings to obtain soul perception^[8][9].
• Artillery spells. The author stated that they require rituals^[10].

For an angel summoning in the Triumvirate Church, "There were lots of chanting and arcane rituals being performed, such as burning of incense and ritualistic bell ringing. Very little of it resembled structured magic as Zorian understood it." "Did all these little rituals count as proper contact procedure or was this just empty tradition that the Triumvirate Church insisted on following?"^[11]

Author's comment about rituals