June 21, 2005:
That magical practice takes place within imagination makes perfect sense, from magic's theoretical basis in Neoplatonism.
In the hierarchy of being, ideas are determinative and thus more "real" than material embodiments of those ideas. The imagination is directly ideational. The Royal Road to reality.
Magical-imaginary operations thus work with a greater degree of determinativeness than practices of any sort which directly interact with material things. Why carve on the cookies, when you can engrave the cookie cutter?