I get that sense too, about magick, whenever it crops up, but I suspect I still have a hindered understanding of it - still don't know the significance of the -k at the end, for example. I pretty much use the -k to distinguish it from the kind of performative stage magic that may come to mind for most people.
Personally, I tend to refer to how emotional conductivity as psychic energy, how it is sort of contagious and can be quite impactful, in terms of how it can inform judgement. And I tend to think of any kind of willful practice regarding the harnessing/directing of these energies as magickal. As opposed to merely being passively and reactively subject to these energies, which seems to be the mode under which the vast majority of people operate.
And then going up an order higher, I'd be interested to elaborate/explore the systems which may tend to be formed by these psychic energies, if there are any physically localized sites wherein certain energies swell and others dissipate. Or perhaps if there are any patterns to detect within a single psyche, certain periodic or otherwise oscillational states of these energies.
I would think its sort of a zero-sum oscillation around a neutral psychic zero-point, a sort of apathetic rest state. That is, if you experience a peak here, you can expect a valley to follow, and vice versa - such that if you zoom out to "see" the whole psychic function, you emotive oscillations from birth to death, it may average out to some kind of regular sum. Or if you were to superimpose the life-function of every psyche, they may all collapse/average out into a flat line. Something like that.
As it pertains to reality, and reality modulation, I would say an understanding/intuition of psychic energies would play a key factor in being able to willfully manipulate either your own reality or the reality of others. In addition to a variety of scientific disciplines that I'm not savvy enough with yet. It wouldn't all be metaphysical, that is.
But your final point, about entering a better reality and staying there, seems to describe a general enlightenment process, whether you consider it a gradual progression or a step-function. But I also get the sense that the bulk of magickal practitioners either don't aim high enough, or don't have enough of a scientific basis to temper and maximize their work. But that could just say more about my current beliefs than about the effectiveness of their practices.