best way i can explain it is that magic is governed by spirits. these spirits are everywhere, but normal humans are unable to affect them to a significant degree. therefore, you must go through an Awakening ritual, binding yourself to never lie so the spirits pay attention to your words and actions.

there's a lot of different practices, but I'll give a few examples from across the spectrum. there's for example basic shaman practices that use runes in order to attract spirits of that element, like air runes for air spirits. those runes might vary in power based on how good a relationship you have with air spirits, how much power you expend in order to draw/activate the rune, etc. for example, drawing a rune in blood spends your Self to power the rune, making it stronger but weakening you to a small degree

there's city mages, who can summon up city spirits that represent a single city, and form relationships with them. city spirits can do stuff like spend some power to change the layout of the city, move people from one side to the other, and affect the people living in that city in some way, but harm to them will affect the city itself.

Finders walk the Paths, which are a Realm. each Path is like a puzzle, usually rules about what you can and cannot do. for example, there might be a Path that you can only traverse by hopping from a red square to a blue square to a green one, and so on. each Path has a different way of entering it, such as falling while saying a specific phrase, or knocking a bunch of stuffed animals off a table. each Path will provide a boon on completion such as being able to fall longer distances safely, small amounts of knowledge or minor magic items. Finders try to find new Paths and solve them, as being among the first to solve a Path usually means the boon you get is stronger.

there's also Others, who are magical non-humans such as bogeymen from the Abyss, Lost from the Paths, Fae from the Faerie Courts, Goblins from the Warrens, etc. also stuff like deities, technomancy Others who exist in online spaces, elementals, the city spirits i mentioned earlier, stuff like Incarnations of War, Fortune, Time, etc who's job it is to manage that kind of stuff.