I'm guessing I misunderstood what you meant by "explain the magic". You were probably thinking about explaining magic by introducing more magic; I was thinking in terms of making the magical bit maximally small and constrained.

Right, that's what I prefer as well. Minimize your magic, restrict it as much as possible, and build your world around the consequences of its existence.

But don't try to explain the inner workings of the magic by spouting nonsense. That just takes me out of the story. Take it for granted, aliens made it, something other than semi-randomly assembled sentences sprinkled with fashionable pop-sci terms.