TheFoxsCloak

Originally Posted by fumei

Originally Posted by Reign

I think we've gone over this before but what's the difference between a Spirit Origin and Saint Graph again? Until recently I thought they were the same thing and Saint Graph was just the ruby text.

The short implication as I see it is that every spiritual/magical being has a 霊基 (NA: "Spirit Origin", lit. "Spiritual Foundation"), while "Saint Graph" is a Servant term. Perhaps even the writing might conflate the two, just as it does Servant and Heroic Spirit, but that's how I see it most of the time.

But regardless, let me try to compile some stuff.

Originally Posted by Petrikow

As far as out-of-story stuff (?) is concerned, Saint Graph always refers to the Servant's card. So on that website Rockxas indirectly cited it says:

サーヴァントが宿るカードを「セイントグラフ」と呼びます。
Cards which hold Servants within them are called Saint Graphs.

So like, you'd infer that with the 霊基一覧 ('Spirit Origin List', I think it is in NA?) being a collection of these cards, that 霊基 = Saint Graph.
This sort of makes sense given that early in F/GO's story, Andersen quite literally equates the 霊基 ('Spirit Origin') with the class of the Servant. You then look at the back of the card, and lo and behold, there's an image of the corresponding class there.

What sort of muddles the water is 霊基グラフ ('Spirit Origin Graph'?), which is introduced in Part 2, and seems to equate to the contents of the briefcase with all your Servants or whatever. Basically a collection of all your 'Spirit Origins'. Then of course, there's the question of why everything and their mom suddenly has them in F/GO. But hey, I mean somehow everything has also been given classes, so maybe this is just how F/GO works. If you have a class, you have a card, therefore 'Spirit Origin'?

Originally Posted by Lily Emilio

There are 霊基, 霊基グラフ,

セイントグラフ

地下大聖杯

,

セイントグラフ進化

霊基再臨

. In a lot of cases when 霊基 or 霊基グラフ, it is to refer to servants summoned by Chaldea (like Kirschtaria said it is a Chaldea thing). However it is also used for entities not even servants, in which, to my understanding, 霊基 should be understood more like literally "spirit origin" or spiritual foundation/base of an entity than a servant. The wild variety of usages make it quite hard to say for sure in which situation it is being used to talk about servant saint graph or just spirit frame in general that many entities have. Such as in the case of Arcueid profile since the context is comparing her as a servant to her as not a servant, the 霊基 there can be understood as servant saint graph. But because it is already used to talk about other beings having nothing to do with servants or ether bodies, you can also say that well maybe it's about 霊基 in general.

Originally Posted by London, 0100041351

Solomon
貴様がいま口にした通りだよ。
It is as you say.
英霊としての格ではない。

クラス

霊基

の格が違うのだ。
It is not our ranks as Heroic Spirits that separate us, it is our

Class

Spiritual Foundation

.

(I think that one is less "霊基 means Class actually" though and more "in this context it is the same").

And then you have this "how to play" site which is long since gone, which incessantly keeps repeating that the cards which house Servants in FGO are called Saint Graphs (セイントグラフ).

"The cards in which Servants reside are called Saint Graphs. Servants who join you are shown as Saint Graphs. There are several ways to improve Servants (Saint Graphs)". You see the gist here. This keeps going, saying again "card = saint graph".

So if you wanted to take all this into account and be really technical, Saint Graph should be a FGO/Chaldea-specific thing to reference Servants, and presumably only those summoned by Chaldea or with the Chaldea system. Spirit Origin/Spiritual Foundation is a catch-all term for spiritual/magical beings' composition which practically all of them have. In that sense, when the text uses 霊基 for Chaldea-related Servants it would not be amiss to use "Saint Graph", but when used for non-Chaldea ones, it seems like it's technically wrong. At this point though, the terms are so interchangable and I doubt it matters as long as you keep track of the actual differentiation if it ever needs to come up, like in some powerlevel discussion or something.