People often ask in chat or the forums "What kinds of spells are real?" or "Does this spell work?" They are often told no, because something they're asking about isn't real and to use common sense to figure out what magic is real. "Common sense" often doesn't mean much to people who are new to magic, especially if most of their exposure to magic has come from Harry Potter and Charmed.
This leads to repeated discussion about why there are spells on this site that don't work, and why people can't talk about certain things in the spells section in the public chat. There is debate about whether fantasy spells will or won't work on other non-physical planes. When I say physical, I mean things that you can see touch and hear as opposed to things perceived on other planes that are believed in or visualized in your mind. I will list a number of fantasy magics below that won't work in the real physical world.
Transformation spells: Spells to physically alter your body into a werewolf, mermaid, vampire, other monsters, other animal, grow wings, unnatural body changes including eye color and instant hair growth, physical shapeshifting, frog tongues, physical beauty spells that don't require physical action
Superpowers: including fireballs, lightning or energy beams comming out of hands, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokinesis, flying on a broom or like superman, invisibility(as in light passing straight through you)
Unnatural Life Spells: immortality, perfect invulnerability to disease, resurrecting pets or human corpses (not including bokor juju zombification)
Defy Physics: flying(again), breathing under water, walk through walls, time travel, jumping or running at unnatural heights and speeds, make desired objects or money come into existance from nothing, instant vanishing spells, summoning physical entities that don't exist
Weather Magic : making storms appear from nothing, hail, or snow unless there was already a good chance of it happening.
Basically, real magic makes possible things happen when you want them to, and a lot of what you see on TV and books is not possible with our current technology. Please comment below if you think I missed any other fantasy spell types that people talk about here.
I will take this opportunity to remind newbies to read over and practice the "basics" described in the General Info forum section, which are skills and theory common to many metaphysical paths. Feel free to expand your knowledge on these areas by looking at other articles here and websites.