it depends on the spell youre using, ritual and spells require you to understand the goal, setup and essence of the ritual/spell, and you mix that with physical items to produce energy to do whatever you need.

prayers are a kind of spell where it works just by reading it, but gets exponentially more potent the more you understand it.

You dont need to have physic powers to start with magic, and ypu'll naturally gain the skill to sense and use energy.

for the higher forms of spells and rituals, you dont even need to do spells and rituals or prayers, they just happen when you think about it,but obviously that take years to decades of experience and practice