I think it would be helpful to have some "if you're doing this, something went wrong" heuristics so that we can notice ahead of time that something undesirable is happening, and stop it.

A possible danger with this is that we think, "oh, we can't sacrifice virgins, that's on the List Of Bad Things, let's sacrifice grandmothers instead". The fact that there is a list might encourage us to think the list is exhaustive. (Here "think" means "think/reason subconsciously/act like/whatever".)

Perhaps we could help avoid this with ritual-moderators who examine rituals for signs that things have gone horribly wrong, but explicitly without advising the ritual-smiths in the process of constructing them. If you can't avoid the moderator's List Of Bad Things without being told what's on it, you also can't avoid the list of Bad Things That The Moderator Didn't Think Of.