hello! things are used for a reason, but i hope you’ll let me make an analogy. witchcraft, spells, they’re a lot like cooking,. hang with me a sec
there are like, a hundred ways to make a chocolate cake. does it matter in the grand scheme of things if you use bittersweet chocolate instead of semisweet, or dark chocolate instead of milk, or even white chocolate? i’ve done 4/5 of those, and i can tell you, nope. it’s still a chocolate cake. your result is the same gist of it, maybe the person eating it can tell your didn’t use their recipe, but no one would argue that it isn’t actually a chocolate cake upon eating it. and it doesn’t just stop there, there are even more ways to alter a chocolate cake, even on a more fundamental level. you can use a box mix or from scratch, use bread flour or cake flour, you can make it gluten free or vegan. you can even use carob (tastes just like chocolate) instead of chocolate and an unsuspecting eater will still think it’s chocolate cake. it’s absolutely mad.
but everything in a cake is there for a reason, as you point out, things are used for a reason. yes! flour is the base and the butter and milk and oil for moisture and the eggs to bind it while it bakes, sugar to make it sweet, salt and vanilla and chocolate for flavor, baking powder/soda to help it rise and balance acidity levels, and baked at 375f for 40 min. it’s fairly standard, and yet nearly all these ingredients can be replaced (see above paragraph) and it’ll still be a chocolate cake, maybe chocolate cake with a twist. i’ve made chocolate cake with ground almonds instead of flour, worked just fine.
and metaphor goes on even longer, obviously if you put like a sock in the cake and make it from garbage and tuna it will no longer be considered a chocolate cake, it’s tuna a la gross. if you really want to get into the philosophical “what makes this cake a chocolate cake” i recommend reading plato’s theory of forms where he basically says “what makes a chair a chair? three legs and no-back is a stool, but if it’s four legs and a back? then how is a dog not a chair?” that’s a joke he doesnt say it exactly like that and really makes you consider how you define things verbally vs your fundamental understanding of them.
and also, no one cares what you make your cakes out of. yeah some nut at the garden party may throw a fit that eww how dare you serve vegan chocolate cake but it’s your cake and what does susan’s opinion even matter? she’s not the leader of cakes. no one is, it’s just a cake.
tl;dr it doesnt matter that there are a hundred ways to make a chocolate cake, all of them work. they may taste a little different but it still functions as a cake
so there is variation, but it’s not set in stone. a spell may call for sage to cleanse but i may choose to use lemon instead. or i might forgo cleansing entirely, because my craft doesn’t call for it, the veritable gluten-free chocolate cake of magic
