Magic! It's a very fun thing! There's a LOT to get into, so please buckle up and bear with me.

First, and foremost, there's the modern conception of magic. This is the pop-culture crap where you have young boys with wands going on silly adventures, or you have wizened wizards (same etymology BTW!) shooting huge fireballs or whatever. None of this is real, but it is really fun!!!! XP

Second, there's the occult conception of magic. This is more legitimate. These are the things like summoning circles, sigils, that kind of thing; books with unpronouncable titles (to you) and the like. There is a crazy amount of overlap between this conception and the modern conception, as well as them both and the quasi-religious performative fanaticism of people who like to think of themselves as practicing the ancient religions of their ancestors. That isn't a field of my own study, so I can't speak for whether or not they're justified in calling their rituals magic, but that's not my worry right now. As niche as the occult conception is, a lot of it can still be performative and appropriated by grifters, so keep a wise head on your shoulders before you buy some stupid crappy charm from some guy on DougsList.

It's my own belief that true magic has to be a synthesis of the two conceptions I listed above. After all, these ideas had to come from somewhere, even if they're distortions of the original true magic. To distort something, that 'something' had to exist in the first place, or else nothing would be distorted. You can't escape the reasoning that there has to be a 'something'. I don't know what that 'something' could possibly be: that is, after all, the nature of magic--to be unknowable and poorly understood. If we knew it, and if we understood it, then it would cease to be magic and become knowledge, or a science. Thus, it is within reason to also say that magic by nature cannot be known. So... and I say this cheekily, you would need to be above nature to have it. You would need to be 'super' natural. See what I did there?? That's what the frickin word means!!! Above nature.

If nothing else, it's fun to read the books and practice the rituals. If you subscribe to the idea that maybe one day, we can all have that magic, then it gives us all a hopeful guiding light into the future. Why not get a headstart?