"Magic" in middle earth

[Tinman]

Ive been trying to understand magic in middle earth. What exactly is happening when a spell is cast or magic is evoked? It seems clear that their are different methods to making magic work too. The other cases, it seems like the magic is so mundane, that it the people who beleive it is magic, are only superstitious!

So who then is capable of performing actual magic (what ever that is...)? The wizards clearly have some capacity to control the world around them... speaking with animals, conjuring flames and light, locking doors.

Can wizards do this because they are, after all, maiar, and have control over the world? Or do they just have knowledge of how this magic works? Knowledge that any one with time, and a strong enough will, could accomplish (perhaps not as well as a wizard, but to a lesser degree).

Elves it seems have some sort of inate "magic", that is so natural to them selves that they do not call it that. What about their magical gear like glowing blades? Has an elf cast a "spell" on these gondorian blades? Is this glowing blade something that any elf could create (an inate power to the race), if he know how to first construct the blade, or would an elf familiar with "magic" have to design it?

Is this magic any different from dwarven magic? Moon letters and hidden doors with magic words? Who is capable of "casting" these spells? Is it that, like elves, their craftsman ship is just SO incredable, that tards like me who can hardly construct a lego set look at their mastercraft as "magical"?

What about men? Certainly they are capable of using magic devices (palantir comes to mind), but are they capable of learning it as well?