Heya there folks okay so magic is really easy first you just have to die.
No really once you're dead it all just kind of happens at once. I mean, have you ever seen a ghost that didn't have *some* kind of magic? That would be silly.
If you aren't willing to die (an unreasonable but common request by my clients) then lets get down to the shitty and overrated magic you can do here on Earth.
First, if you've ever read anything about magic (especially if they told you it was a "secret" hint hint) throw that all away. The person writing that book possibly had actual magic but guess what? It's not like any of it got into their stupid book.
If someone you never met falls in love with another person you never met and writes poetry about it and you read the poetry, what's going to happen? Basically nothing. But the original love was probably real, it's just not communicable like that and doesn't really mean much after it's been separated so far from where it actually happened.
But if those two lovers took you into their bedroom and you stared into their eyes in turn and watched them stare into each other's eyes and used your tongue to learn the exact shape of every one of their teeth, then their poetry would probably mean a lot to you and you might even learn something from it.
That's all a bunch of words to say a book can't teach you something you
don't already know.
"If not in doubt, get in doubt. If already in doubt, fuck it"
The first step to doing magic is to stop not doing magic. Why aren't I doing magic? you might ask. Let's look at history.
So most of your brain is dedicated to interacting with what's in front of you and whatever and a long time ago a bunch of assholes turned this into Science and worshipped it into the ground. That's all well and good but they had to suppress the parts of their brains that disagreed with this Science in order to fully commit themselves to it, and then used patriarchy and whatnot to pretend this was normal and that everyone should do this awful thing to their brains.
Sadly, this basically ruins the human and is in the top 10 reasons we all have permanent brain damage from growing up here. Small tangent, carpentry is like #7 on that list. Anyway this fucked up way of living provides some semblance of "rationality" and "consistency" but also requires metaphorically chaining all of the most precious parts of your mind in the metaphorical basement.
Magic starts with unchaining these parts and listening to them and letting them play and explore. That's it. You can draw lines on the floor or your skin, or make fancy incantations, really anything will do as long as you're letting them play and you let things get all sacred about it.
And this doesn't have to mean you reject rationality completely! The hall of rationality *does* start to look kind of silly from the outside after you've spent most of your life drooling on its floors. But keep in touch with it too, it is a place of power and it's at the very least an ugly necessity for interfacing with the vast majority of people. You really can have both, you can eat your cake and fuck it too.
Every piece of art you have ever looked at or read or listened to was "made up". It's not arbitrary or random, but it is something that someone just kind of created. When you make art sometimes it doesn't have any effect on the world and sometimes it does. Sometimes it feels good and sometimes it hurts and usually both. The same is true for every act of magic you'll do in your short life. You will make it up, and sometimes something will happen. It's not always original and it's mostly kind of silly.
And finally, you won't be able to articulate it. Like the poetry thing. Some people will have magic like yours and you will get each other so well and maybe start a cute lil cult together. Some people are still in rationality land and won't get any of it. And sometimes someone will want what you have but you will be pitifully unprepared to share it.
So that's the whole thing it's basically just stop suppressing all the crazy shit and just fuck around and find out. It's all in your head (not just the magic I mean it's ALL in your head, get it?) so go play. And for the love of god's blood don't try to use it to hurt people.