Magic may well have been real. Healing crystals, shamanry, witchcraft, voodoo, things of this nature may have been real at one point and have since been patched out. These could have simply been glitches in the program.
We’ve all heard of glitches in games that can be exploited that eventually get patched. Could have been real.
Spells are life cheats, intentionally left in by the devs. They patch them out if they get discovered and alter the meta too much.