We all are that person.

Not evading your question, but this really drives to the heart of Magic these days. I'm sure we could point out authors and leaders in the occult and "New Age" (bleh) scene, but in reality, we are the generation(s) that are LIVING in the dream of the Magicians of old. If one really looks at history since the late 1800s, they see that behind the countries and the governments and the shadow governments, there were Magicians. They weren't always necessarily in the rooms when decisions were made, for example. These Magicians were widespread and varied but, in my opinion, they took very bold steps to make the realms normally interacted with in "traditional" magic MERGE with the normal, everyday external world.

To many, it looks like a "conspiracy of secret societies guiding history with Magic" but from a higher perspective, our civilization and our arguably hyper-enlightened mass-public (compared to ages past) was inevitable and "pre-destined"; almost like we were pulled towards something in the future the minute Magical knowledge began to leak into mass consciousness and merge with matter on a large scale. It burst open new avenues of thought and exploration in every field of research, but the greatest change of the 20th century wasn't anything technological. It was internal, mental, spiritual; the Magical revolution inside the human being. It started to erode the line between Heaven/Earth, Micro/Macro, inner/outer, mind/matter, imagination/reality, until a meeting and melding of the two is becoming inevitable and fast approaching.

We are living in a civilization linked together by high speed information transfer and technology where ideas are becoming reality so fast that it is accelerating our species (and planet) to spill over into what could only be called another plane of existence. Even your average person has seen "The Secret" and the Law of Attraction on Oprah. Even though this is a neutered and watered down version of Magic that caters to the material plane, it still carries within it some very serious Magical concepts that are --like it or not-- now being practiced with success by a huge portion of the Western world. The veils are getting thinner and physical reality is merging with the realms of the Magician: with Imagination proper.

My point that we are being pulled towards an inevitability that was --in part-- catalyzed by the Magicians of old. The changes that go on in the Initiate and the practicing Magician have been taking place in the global-soul of the human race. We are, each and every one of us, assisting in the Great Work of our species; each in our own "pre-destined" way.

I know this isn't exactly what you asked, but this to me is extremely exciting and I think we need to remember our individual places in the scheme of things, as Magicians. The "Magician" is the new description of the human being; we are no longer just animals with thumbs: we are training to become Magicians and Channels of Infinity, co-creators of Existence. The goal of teachers is for the students to surpass them. We have the entire knowledge of our species' history at our fingertips, and Infinity is waiting very shortly down the road.

The Magicians and Shamans who are helping to steer this inevitability are the teachers that are leading not just Magic, but the entire planet; each one of us growing into our shoes as individuals and walking our path widens the road for others to follow and forces shoe shops to open up on every corner, if you get my meaning! This is what I believe the Magicians of old envisioned. A planet of Magicians is no longer the "real world" as we've come to think of it; its another dimension of existence. Its taking place as we speak, bubbling under the surface of everything.