A key part of what you wrote here is "how do beginners do what Egyptian Magi were doing?"
The reality is that they can't - beginners cannot replicate the capabilities of these magi, not anymore than an amateur skateboarder can replicate Tony Hawk.
The Magi you are referring to in this case are essentially the professionals, and that requires abilities beyond what a novice is capable of.
But of course, there are clues that can lead the way for a novice to bring themselves up to that level eventually.
One of the first keys to understanding the capabilities of magic, is understanding the structure of magical operations and how energy travels.
The beginning of any magical operation starts in the most subtle mental sphere, because magic is fundamentally the use of mental power to achieve a desired outcome.
And because the root of magic lies in the mental sphere, the mental sphere is the first and easiest sphere to influence.
So before a novice decides to pursue miraculous feats like levitating or cursing objects or etc., he must first ask himself, has he first mastered the spheres which come before the physical?
Chasing after such impressive powers right out the gate is like jumping into the deep end of the pool before you have even learned to swim in the shallows.
So before a novice directs his eyes towards such lofty feats, he must first master the prerequisites which come before it.
In this case, he must first master magic on the mental sphere, meaning he must be consistently capable of influencing things mentally (and also have his own mind mastered to begin with).
If he has attained a degree of proficiency in this area, then he may begin looking forward to the next stage - the Astral sphere.
The sphere in-between the Mental and the Physical, it is the threshold between physical and non-physical magic. Most practitioners get stuck here.
It is certainly a more difficult sphere to influence than the Mental and its effects can be quite tangible, but it is far away from the difficulty of affecting the Physical and does not posses the same degree of tangibility as the latter.
But if the student is diligent enough and masters magic on the Astral sphere, then he may finally begin experimenting with magic on the Physical sphere.
The Physical sphere is the farthest and most dense sphere of existence in the perspective of magic, and the energy requirements to cause an effect upon it is phenomenal compared to the other spheres.
A person can easily spend their entire life mastering physical magic, if ever.
But those like the Egyptian Magi were indeed devoted practitioners who spent their lives honing their work, so it is not too surprising they were capable of such things.
On the other hand, most modern practitioners have difficulty spending more than 15-30 minutes a day for practice on a consistent basis.
So as an old magician I used to know sometimes said, if you aren't spending at least an hour or more a day practicing, it is best if you leave your dreams of hollywood magic in a grave.
Though to be fair, there are other reasons modern practitioners struggle with such things.
The dawn of modern technology where information is so easy to spit out and amass, combined with naive New-Age movements who are jumping into old traditions and tearing them into scratch while spreading their own watered-down versions of such things, has created an age of occultism where there is simply too much information and too much of it isn't worth its weight.
On one hand, occultism has become more accessible than ever and there are more people actively involved in it than before, but on the other hand, now there are simply lots of occultists running around where no one seems to know exactly what they're doing because good information is buried beneath piles of fluff.
It also seems like the attitude has changed, where everyone is eager to read everything or debate on end, but no one is eager to practice.
Honestly I would have hated to grow up as an occultist in this particular period, there's too much material to choose from, too much of it is of questionable value, and everyone seems confused.
Perhaps in time, this influx of information and practitioners will eventually mature and filter out into a more organized and coherent era of magic that rivals anything that has come before, but only time will tell.
. so all sorts of subconscious stupid reasons, but well im not going to talk to a candybar in my dreams 
