With magic things are not always what they seem.

What can appear plain and simple, imperceptible even, could be driven by powerful cosmic forces.
Conversely, what appears tangible and tantalizing is often times limited in power.
Indulge me, if you will, in a very peculiar metaphor.
Imagine for a moment a microwave, an implement you’re surely familiar with. What could be plainer than the experience of using one? You pop last night’s cold burrito into the little metal box, press a button, it hums and buzzes and whirs, and a minute later your food comes out hot.
The whole procedure is simple as can be. For all intents and purposes, “nothing” happened from your perspective.
Yet the forces of nature that are at work are tremendous. Electromagnetic waves cause the water molecules in your food to vibrate, creating energy directly within your food itself.
Moreover, without the safety measures and guardrails that are in place, a plain kitchen microwave would have enough power to quite literally melt your face off.
Now imagine cooking something over a small campfire.
The fire crackles and pops, the flames dance in the wind. You feel the warmth emanate from it, and if you bring your hand too close you might even feel the sting of heat burning your skin; surely this must be a powerful force.
But, how powerful is a campfire really? Not very, of course.
A trick many of us learned in childhood is that you can rather easily pass your hand through a fire as long as you’re quick enough. Even if you held it there for some time, you’d suffe, what are in the grand scheme of things, relatively minor burns. The internet has no lack of videos of drunks falling into campfires wholesale, and rolling out of them without so much as a scratch.
Now take a bushman who understands very little about cosmic forces and least of all microwaves. Between the two of them, to him it is the fire that would seem profound.
The microwave is a plain, metal box that seems to do nothing but buzz for a couple of seconds—and that’s assuming you’ve managed to hook it up to a source of electricity.
Yet the fire roars and crackles, provides you with warmth and allows you to cook your food; it’s almost divine in its grandeur, it is no wonder that many peoples around the world came to worship fire itself.
Yet, we must admit, a microwave is more powerful—not superior, mind you, but more powerful.
Magic is much the same.
Some forms of magic are driven by powerful currents, yet often times it does not appear to be so. Quite the opposite, because of our primitive understanding, these magical operations look plain and simple, almost like nothing is happening at all.
Then there are forms of magic that are driven by currents far weaker—yet they produce effects that are sensually spectacular. You might summon a spirit and feel a chill up your spine, the temperature in the room dropping, as a shadowy figure manifests itself right before your eyes, and so on.
However, often times the outcomes of such magical operations are disappointing. The large sum of money asked for does not arrive. Instead, you find a wrinkled, dirty, torn-up 5 dollar bill outside.
Just because your magical work is not accompanied by fanfare (or rather, you are not capable of perceiving it), do not think that it is inferior because of it.
The ignorant man is amazed by a letter in an envelope, thinking to himself it is the pinnacle of long-distance communication. Simultaneously, he thinks nothing of the radio waves simply because he cannot see them. Magic is much the same.