All things are connected. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous, a limiting theoretical perspective at best, a dangerous self-delusion at worst.
Nothing is exactly like anything else. All things are new under the sun.
There are patterns in everything. Everything is unique. Everything shares its origins with everything else.
You are not obligated to do anything against your will. Neither is anyone else.
Humans are designed to find patterns, to understand patterns, to enforce them and manipulate them. They are your birthright. Find the patterns in your world. Use them.
Cause and Effect are inventions of the human mind. Nothing is inevitable.
Social animals have a natural gift for understanding sets of rules. This does not just mean knowing the rules that you have to follow; this means knowing when and where the rules can be broken.
When you have no other option, no other idea, no other plan: follow the rules. Improvising will not save you from the Fair Folk. Manners will.
You are defined by the obligations you choose to honor. Choose wisely.
Cultural animals live within a web of abstract symbols. We each have our own unique interpretation of those symbols. The object you think of when you read “tree” is not the same as the object I envision when I write it. Yet, we can communicate within this web, by evoking each other’s unique understandings of the world, and through these symbols, convey something beyond both of our experience. What is that, if not magic?
Magic is not in thinking, it is in doing. Magic does not exist inside your mind. It exists in the physical world. There is no theoretical magic. There is only the Practice.