You’re actually right that to accomplish the third picture, the long yarn end (the one that goes to the ball of yarn, not the short starting end) will be pulled to *behind* the loop so that you can grab it with the hook, but there’s no knot there; it’s only my fingers holding the loop together, so that’s easily done – I actually just hold it at the point where they cross, so there is no obvious ‘in front’ or ‘behind’. All that matters is that you:
a) Hold the loop together with your thumb and forefinger
b) Insert the hook from front to back and use it to grab the yarn that goes to the ball before bringing the hook back up through the loop to the front

The loop won’t hold together by itself until you do the ch 1, so don’t release it from your thumb and forefinger until you’ve completed step 3.

I know I’m a beginner, but I don’t think of myself as a totally stupid person, yet I cannot understand this explanation, or, really ,any other tutorial I have seen for the “magic” loop. It’s frustrating, and I’m just going to have to have someone show me In Real Life.

[...] a magic ring. R1: chain 1, sc into loop 5 times, pull loop closed, join with sl st to chain 1 R2: It might be [...]

In my example, the end is on the reverse side, but I snipped it short so that it wouldn’t show in the pic and confuse people by hanging down. I hope that clears things up for you!

[...] Klicka här för bilder hur man gör en magisk ring (engelska). [...]

You should be able to see the overlap by looking at the first two photos – the first photo shows the yarn wrapped over my fingers, then the next one shows the loop being held together with my thumb at the top of the loop (where the ends cross).

I hope that helps!