Reading Commanding The Light
Commanding The Light: A Conversation About Paranormal Healing is a book by Antonio Silva and the late parapsychologist Hans Holzer, published as an extended conversation between the two men about Antonio’s practice as a medical intuitive and spiritual healer. The book sits in an unusual category — it is not a memoir, not a how-to manual, and not academic in the conventional sense. It is closest to what was once called a colloquy: a long, careful exchange between two serious people, transcribed and edited, about a subject neither of them treats lightly.
For readers curious about Antonio’s work, the book is the most extended written record available. For readers curious about the academic study of intuitive practitioners, it is one of the few sustained documents in which a parapsychologist and a working practitioner sat down and worked through the territory together. This guide explains what the book contains, why each of the two authors took the project on, and who is likely to find it valuable.
What the Book Is
Commanding The Light is structured as a series of conversations. Holzer asks questions; Antonio answers. The questions cover Antonio’s family lineage, his early experiences of perceptual gift, the cases he has worked over the decades, the philosophical framework he operates within, and his views on the academic and scientific study of practices like his. Holzer, for his part, offers context — situating Antonio’s work within the broader history of intuitive and paranormal healing he had spent his career studying.
The form matters. By choosing the conversation format rather than a single-author manuscript, the two men created a document in which Antonio’s voice is preserved as he actually speaks — direct, plain, without the academic apparatus that often gets layered onto this material when others write about it. Holzer’s contribution is to ask the questions a careful researcher would ask, and to occasionally step back and offer his own assessment of what Antonio is describing.
The result is a book that reads, for long stretches, like a transcript of a serious conversation between two people who have nothing to prove to each other and considerable respect for the territory they are discussing.
About Hans Holzer
Hans Holzer (1920-2009) was an Austrian-American parapsychologist who spent his career studying paranormal phenomena, with a particular focus on the intuitive and healing practitioners he found in many cultures. He published more than 130 books, taught for years at the New York Institute of Technology, and was one of the most publicly visible figures in the parapsychological community for several decades.
Holzer’s approach to the practitioners he studied was distinctive. He did not approach intuitives as a debunker — his stated position was that the phenomena were real and the open question was about their mechanism — but he also did not approach them as a believer in the colloquial sense. His framing, repeated across his many books and interviews, was that intuitive and paranormal abilities deserved the same patient empirical examination that any other unexplained phenomenon merits in serious scholarship.
His connection with Antonio Silva grew out of this body of work. Holzer encountered Antonio in the course of his ongoing research, recognized the practice as worth a long-form study, and proposed the book that became Commanding The Light.
About Antonio Silva
Antonio Silva is a medical intuitive and spiritual practitioner whose work spans more than fifty years. Born into a Portuguese family lineage of healers on the island of São Miguel in the Azores, he moved to the United States as an adult and built a practice based primarily on distance work with clients across the country. His work has been featured by CNN in Atlanta, presented at the United Nations in New York, and discussed at universities and academic institutions across the United States.
What Holzer’s book accomplishes that no shorter form could is to capture the practice in Antonio’s own framing. The lineage, the family stories, the cases, the philosophical understanding — all of it appears in the book in language Antonio actually uses, not language imposed on the practice by someone outside it.
Themes
Several threads run through the book.
Inheritance versus profession. Antonio is clear throughout the conversations that he did not choose to be a medical intuitive in the way someone chooses to be a doctor or an attorney. The gift, in his understanding and in the tradition he was born into, appeared in childhood and was confirmed by his grandmother at birth. He took up the practice as an adult, but the work itself was always understood as something he had inherited rather than acquired. Holzer presses him on this — what does it mean for a serious adult professional to insist that his abilities were given to him? — and Antonio’s answers are matter-of-fact rather than mystical.
Complement, not replacement. Both men return repeatedly to the question of how this work relates to mainstream medicine. Antonio’s position is consistent: the work is offered as a complement to medical care, never as a substitute for it. Holzer affirms this framing as the only intellectually serious one available — and notes that practitioners who claim to replace medical care are operating outside the bounds of the credible tradition.
The nature of the perception itself. A significant portion of the book is given over to Antonio describing what perception is like during a session. Holzer is interested in the phenomenology — what is the experience, in Antonio’s own words, of perceiving something about a person who is not present? Antonio’s answers are descriptive rather than theoretical, and the resulting passages are among the most useful in the book for anyone trying to understand the practice from the inside.
The role of academic study. Holzer’s framing question, woven through the conversations, is the question he asked across his career: what would it take for the academic and scientific communities to engage seriously with practices like Antonio’s? His answer, in the book and elsewhere, is patient empirical study of the kind he tried to model in his own work.
Key Passages
A handful of the book’s lines have circulated independently since publication.
> “You don’t have to see it to believe it. My healing is deep within the body, the mind, and the soul — you don’t necessarily see it, but you will sometimes feel it.” — Antonio Silva
> “The work of these practitioners is not magic and not metaphor — it is a phenomenon that deserves the same patient empirical attention we give to anything else we do not yet fully understand.” — Hans Holzer
> “I did not choose this. It was given to me. What I did choose was whether to take up the responsibility of it.” — Antonio Silva
These three lines, taken together, give a fair picture of the book’s register. Antonio is direct, plainspoken, and grounded. Holzer is careful, scholarly, and respectful of the territory.
Who Should Read This Book
The book is a useful read for several distinct kinds of readers.
Anyone considering working with Antonio. The book is the most thorough preparation available. After reading it, a prospective client has a fairly complete sense of how Antonio thinks about the work, what a session involves, and what the work is and isn’t.
Anyone interested in the academic study of intuitive practitioners. Holzer’s framing throughout the book — and his career as a whole — represents one of the most serious attempts to bring scholarly rigor to this subject. The book is a useful entry point.
Anyone with a family history in the São Miguel tradition or related lineages. The book is one of the few extended written records of this kind of practice. For readers connected to similar traditions — Portuguese, Brazilian, Caribbean folk healing, related lineages — the book offers recognition of practices that often pass unrecorded.
Anyone working through a serious decision about how to integrate spiritual or contemplative practice with medical care. The book’s repeated emphasis on the complementary framing is useful for readers thinking through how the two kinds of care can coexist in their own lives.
It is not the right book for readers looking for a step-by-step instructional manual on becoming a medical intuitive, a debunking treatise, or a polemic for or against alternative medicine. It is a careful conversation, and it asks for a careful reader.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I buy Commanding The Light?
The book is available wherever books are sold, in both print and digital formats. The full title is Commanding The Light: A Conversation About Paranormal Healing, by Antonio Silva and Hans Holzer.
Is the book written for a general audience or a specialist audience?
It is written for a careful general reader. There is no technical apparatus — no footnotes, no jargon — but the subject matter rewards close attention. Most readers move through it slowly.
Does Antonio still publish new writing?
Antonio’s primary writing project remains Commanding The Light. He has not published a follow-up book to date. His written work since then has been occasional and primarily through interviews, lectures, and the materials associated with his practice.
How is this different from other books about energy healing?
Most contemporary books on energy healing fall into one of two categories — instructional manuals teaching specific modalities, or first-person memoirs by practitioners. Commanding The Light is neither. It is a sustained conversation between a working practitioner and an academic researcher, which puts it in a category populated by very few books in the field.
Did Hans Holzer write a foreword or afterword?
Holzer is the co-author, not a foreword-writer. His contribution runs throughout the book — his questions, his comments, his framing — rather than being confined to introductory or closing material.
Working With Antonio
Antonio Silva works with clients across the United States by telephone, by appointment only. His practice spans more than fifty years. To learn more about his background and lineage, read About Antonio and The São Miguel Healing Tradition. For an explanation of the medical intuitive role, see What Is a Medical Intuitive?. For information about working with him, see the sessions page.
This article is offered for educational purposes and does not constitute medical advice. The work described in Commanding The Light, like Antonio’s contemporary practice, is a spiritual and energetic practice intended to complement, not replace, professional medical care. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding medical concerns.