I've told this story before, I think in an old blog post. Many years ago, while working with the system of Franz Bardon, I performed an evocation of a particular spirit to aid in the consecration of my ritual sword. The sword was blunt to the point of being flat-edged, as I had purchased it purely for symbolism and not to physically cut things, though it is full tang. At some point during the evocation, I was quite surprised to find that the blade had become sharpened! This is not the most dramatic such event which I could have told, but it is one of the most immediate and undeniably physical magical manifestations I've seen.
I find that much in the modern occult world is focused more around respectability than around the wonders we ought to be claiming for ourselves. Many self-described witches, magicians, pagans, and occultists, while ostensibly practicing magic, have also made themselves the police of rationalism and physicalism. The oft-repeated dogma that nothing is supernatural, that magic is the use of as-yet unrecognized natural laws, is usually invoked to justify placing hard limits on the possibilities of reality. It could go another way: the idea that magic is natural could also open us up to the idea that we simply do not, and likely can not, know what the real limits of Nature are.
I'm always bemused when I encounter a practitioner of magic who claims with authority that magic can't do this or that — usually the list including phenomena well attested in the traditional literature of the field the world over. Levitation, telekinesis, spirits appearing visibly or physically impacting the environment, bilocation, and much else besides. I can't claim to have witnessed all of these, but I have seen some of them.
I don't mean to imply that skepticism of specific claims is a bad thing; I have to know a person very well to accept such stories from them. But it is foolish to a priori insist that none of these things ever could happen when we are already acknowledging divination and magical action at a distance.
I do not wish to paint with too broad a brush, but I wonder how much of this self-limitation arises from a basically unbroken acceptance of the materialist-atheist religion of our mainstream culture. (Any who question whether this is, in fact, the dominant model because religious zealotry still exists need only look to the physicalist and historically literalistic interpretations of those zealots themselves.) A handful of experiences which cannot be easily explained away during childhood, and I found myself permanently unable to entertain materialism. Whether or not anything is supernatural, literally beyond Nature, is not that important to the present musing. For many of us, the universe is far bigger, far more mysterious, and far more malleable in manifestation than the overculture will allow.
It further appears as if belief in such things is not necessary for their occurrence, but active disbelief in them makes it far less likely that they'll happen to you. For someone who is happy with a physicalist universe, this is fine. But for someone who calls themself a witch, a magician, or a yogi, building such a conceptual wall is counterproductive in the extreme.
Choosing such limitations may feel safe — whether safe from frightening experiences, or safe from the sneering of the cultural mainstream — but it is like cutting off a limb because prevailing beauty standards demand it.