Interview with Maria Shaw

The EDGE Interview with Maria Shaw
by Tim Miejan

It's been said that our life lessons and karma are clearly identified at the moment of our birth, based on the position of the planets and constellations when we take our first breath. However, how we live out our lives given the hand that we're dealt is another question.

Astrologers, who seemingly can answer a multitude of questions about our challenges in life with only the skimpiest of information -- our birth time and location -- are a largely untapped resource for information that can assist in us in all aspects of our lives.

They are widely known for the most basic and highly generalized sun sign horoscopes that are published in dailies across the country. They live and work in communities throughout the country and assist average people with their seemingly average lives.

Of course, there are always exceptions.

Maria Shaw, a former TV news anchor, has appeared on Fox News, America Talk Radio, television shows ranging from Blind Date to Soap Talk to the Anna Nicole Smith show. And she's the author of the best-selling book, Heart and Soul: A Karmic Love and Compatibility Guide, and her latest, The Enchanted Soul. She recently signed with the new age publishing giant Llewellyn and her next book, Stargazer, is expected out this fall.

Maria will be in the Twin Cities May 30-31 to present a Friday talk and a daylong Saturday workshop as part of The EDGE Speakers Series. The following is a recent interview she conducted with The EDGE from her office in Detroit.

Where did you grow up?
Maria Shaw: In Michigan, on a farm. We rode horses and did the 4-H thing and a little bit of rodeo. I was adopted by my great aunt, and I met my birth mother when I was 23, 24, and she was an astrologer.

Really?
Shaw: Yes. She was a real estate executive by day and an astrologer by night. It's a bit of a strange story.

I never met my birth father, but he was allegedly in the Mafia. His name was Fast Eddie and he was in the Purple Gang in Detroit. I'm part Italian. I heard that he was also into astrology and that he got my mother involved in it because he felt that she had an interest in it and he would be able to get to know her better.

I guess he was running from the FBI. He was in Chicago and had moved out to California and then he'd come back to Michigan and was trying to track me down. He was trying to threaten my biological mother to try to find me, as the story was passed down through the generations of my relatives.

At that point I was kind of kept secret. My biological mother was not allowed to talk to my adopted mother, even though that was her aunt. But I met her when I was 23 or 24, and she said, "You know, you're real intuitive."

I was always interested in this stuff anyhow, but I didn't think I would ever be a reader. I was a news anchor here in Michigan. I have a journalism degree and I've been in the media since I was 16, writing for magazines and newspapers and then radio and TV. So when my mom said that, about being intuitive, I said, "Yeah, yeah, right," but I was interested in it.

I started working at a radio station as news director but the radio station burned down in 1991 and they had to rebuild it. New management came in and they wanted everybody to work for minimum wage, so I quit. At the same time, we had to move to Detroit because of my husband's career.

So, I was left without work, without contacts, and my mother said, "Well, why don't you start reading?" So, they started getting me parties and she trained me how to read the Tarot and she taught me about astrology. Back then I was just doing it for fun. I was just doing maybe four parties a month for Halloween.

So your biological mother was the one who actually inspired you to get into astrology.
Shaw: Yeah. She taught me a lot about it and then I took classes. I went to the conferences and seminars, but my mother taught me the basics of the Tarot and how to work with my intuitive ability and use astrological concepts.

We developed a great relationship. I was with her for seven years before she died of breast cancer in 1995. She was like my best friend. After she died, I thought, "You know, I enjoy doing this." And I ended up becoming very well-known in Michigan and then started doing things in Florida. All over the country my name started getting known, because people would move and they'd tell somebody about me. So here I was, flying around the country doing corporate events and parties and then just within the last three years, my career has just taken of off phenomenally. I have my publicist in Los Angeles, I'm up for my own TV show, we're shooting a pilot, I've just signed a big book deal with Llewellyn, the first book comes out October, and Soap Opera Digest has got a 10-page spread April 29 in the magazine that I'm doing. It's unbelievable. I don't know what's happened, but my chart is good this year.

Why is astrology important to you right now in your life.
Shaw: Because it lights my way. Ultimately, I know that I have the power of free will to make my own choices, but astrology gives me a guide. I always say that my astrology chart is like my roadmap of life. If I know there are good aspects coming up, then I push. If I know that I need to lay back or pay attention to a certain area of my life that I may have more challenges in, then I'm prepared for it. It is a guide that shines a light on my way. I still walk the path, but it is my flashlight.

And it's really important not so much that I live by it, but as far as maybe helping me make choices at the right time. And it's also good for helping you learn what your purpose in life is. For years, I always thought the media was the thing I wanted to do, but the news anchoring and the hosting shows is more of an ego-based business. When I got into the spiritual type of a path that I'm on now, I'm still doing TV and radio, but it's a little bit different. It's more about helping people rather than promoting myself. I think that's my niche, because in my chart it shows I'm supposed to be a teacher, work on my spiritual side and do writing and publishing on a national level.

I believe that if you're on your right path, things fall in your lap -- and I have been so blessed. Things have been falling in my lap.

I just did an interview not too long ago with a popular psychic here in the Twin Cities and we had a discussion about the entertainment perception of the work that she does. I think that might apply also to you with regard to astrology. A lot of people view astrology readings as just entertainment. Can you explain why they are much more than that?
Shaw: I think astrology's kind of gotten lumped in with the Tarot and the palmistry and people look at it as a psychic tool, but actually astrology is a science. The art is in the interpretation. Astrology's been around for thousands of years. With all of the professional astrologers conferences, like the American Federation of Astrologers, that are coming together worldwide, we're trying to make it more professional and build a reputation of being a more professional society.

But unfortunately, right now it's kind of got lumped in with the Miss Cleos and things like that. And, for most people, all their knowledge of astrology is reading their horoscope in the daily newspaper.

Exactly.
Shaw: That's not what astrology is. That's Sun sign astrology and it's very, very general. Astrology is so much more than that.

If you look at your chart, you take your birth time and where you were born and it's a key. This is the map that you've chosen, the life that you've chosen to live -- and if you can understand astrology, you can understand your life path.

I hope through people like myself and other people who are leaders in astrology that we can get the word out and make astrology more of a respectable field. When I do conferences or lectures and workshops, I'm very particular with where I go and the people who I deal with, because there's a lot of scam artists out there, there's a lot of phonies or a lot of people that look like gypsies or act like gypsies. We want to completely stay away from that and present a professional image.

So, I always tell people that when you're looking for an astrologer or a reader, you want to go with somebody you are referred to, maybe somebody who has written books on the subject, who lectures and who teaches, somebody with more of a background than just hanging up a neon sign on a corner in a trailer.

From a very basic level, what is the basis of astrology and how does it relate to the timing of when a soul incarnates into a body?
Shaw: When you are born, I believe that you choose what it is that you want to work on, perhaps something that you didn't fulfill in your prior lifetime. You choose the people that you want to meet, the souls you want to reconnect with, the talents you want to expand on, the wrongs you want to make right, any karma left over from a previous lifetime, the lessons you want to learn, or the soul mate you want to reconnect with.

There's always a life purpose, a life path. There's always something that you need to leave behind, which is shown in the South Node. There's always something that you aspire to be, and that's shown in the North Node. So, the minute you take the first breath, those planets are positioned in a certain position in the sky. And the minute you take that first breath and the doctor says, "OK, 9:22 a.m." or whatever time you were born, then that moment, if you can imagine, is frozen in time and it creates your personality. The way the planets were positioned, if they were in good position in relation to each other, that dictates your personality and your life path that you chose to experience.

You mentioned the planets being in "a good position," but some people don't have bad positions and others have good, do they? It's perfect for each person, what they chose, right?
Shaw: We look at some charts and some astrologers will say, "Oh, my gosh! This is a terrible chart!" Well, it's not terrible to that soul because it's their challenge or what they wanted to work on. That could be the best chart for them. Maybe they need to work on relationship issues. Maybe they need to learn about love. But to somebody else who just looks at it from a mundane perspective, they might say, "Oh my gosh, you have all these squares and all these oppositions! Oh, you're life is just going to hell!"

But their soul says, "No, that's what I want to do." After the chart is explained to them, their own personality might react with, "Why would I ever choose this chart? Why do I have all these lessons?" Their soul knows. When they get in touch with their spiritual side and they look at the lessons that they're learning, they look at the challenges in their life from a spiritual perspective, then there's a lot of growth. But, when they look at things and then they resist the change or they say, "Well, I'm not going down that direction. I don't want to learn that. Why should I have to put up with that?" then that's when they meet with more opposition, because they're choosing not to learn their lessons and they're not on the right path.

I believe the personality and the sign is chosen by the soul. Let's say you wanted to be a Taurus, because Taurus is here to learn about security -- financial security, security within themselves and materialism versus spirituality. These are salt-of-the-earth types who are supposed to use their logic. Maybe in prior lifetime they may have been poor. Maybe they had to struggle all their life. So this time around, they said, "I'm going to be a Taurus and materialism is going to be important to me, and making money's going to be important to me. I'm going to create my own security." So they come over with Taurus type traits to help them to do that.

Libras are here to learn about love and relationships. Maybe they didn't get it right in a prior lifetime, so somebody says, "I'm going to come back with Libra traits." So they're born being fair, being balanced, seeking relationships out, trying their best to work out their relationship issues. And it will show right there in the chart what your path is.

People think, "Oh it's a real mystery!" No, it's not. It's right there. You can tell what your soul purpose is, what you're here to do, and even who's going to help you -- who you've had past-life connections with and are reconnecting with in this lifetime. You've chosen all of this. But, you need your astrologer to help point it out, because most people aren't aware of this on their own.

During your Friday night talk in Minneapolis on May 30, you're going to explain an ancient formula used to predict the age of your soul. What is the basis of this?
Shaw: This is probably a thousand-year-old theory that's been handed down generation-to-generation. It's in my first book, Heart and Soul. Before we published the book, my assistant and I ran the theory by on more than 20,000 clients in the last 10 years. I would say there's about 92.7 percent accuracy rate where people really say, "Yes. That is me. That is exactly my life. That's exactly how I feel. That's exactly my lesson."

The theory, kind of like cats, is that we all have nine lives, so to speak, and you're going to learn what issue you're working with in a given lifetime. So, during this talk, you'll find out what lifetime you're living in, if it's your first, second, third, all the way up to nine, what your lesson is, specifically what you lesson is in love, and then you can also do the formula for all of your friends and your family -- and it's amazingly accurate.

It's based on the theory of numerology, and it's from China. It's a very ancient theory. And what was funny about this was that my aunts had taught me this theory. When I met my assistant, Cindy, she had been doing this for years and people in her family, I believe her grandma was a spiritual medium, had taught her how to do this. We started talking and we were both doing the same numerology, but we called it something different.

People will find this very accurate and very amazing. If you can imagine, it's like you're going through school. Your first lifetime is like first grade. By the time you get through a ninth lifetime, you graduate and don't come back. But, there's specific lessons that you have to learn through each lifetime, for example in your second lifetime you're here to learn about relationships, the mechanics of relationships, and there's certain tests that you have to pass in that lifetime to be able to move on to the next lifetime. Four is an interesting lifetime because you have predestined mates. These would be the souls that you've made contracts with to come back over with and meet and to marry. Usually, fours don't get divorced. They try to go into therapy or work very hard on making their relationships work. In the number seven lifetime, you're either very dependent on society or society is very dependent on you. There was a study done that a lot of seven's were either in nursing homes, mental institutions and prisons or they were the caretakers in the family. Seven is a very spiritual and a very karmic lifetime.

And then we tell you ways to work around your challenges and talk about lessons that you can learn through that lifetime. How can you best cope if it's more of a challenging lifetime. It's a wonderful, wonderful workshop.

It's not necessarily the fact that you only have nine lifetimes because you could have thousands of lifetimes, but a number of lifetimes may involve working on the same issue. Right?
Shaw: That's absolutely correct. Again, think of it as first to ninth grade. Let's say you don't pass all your tests in fifth grade. You have to repeat fifth grade over and over and over again until you pass all those tests, even with one little class or one test that's holding you back that you have to come back to repeat. Because you could be a very old soul and be in your number two lifetime.

You focus, to a degree, on helping people who are seeking love in their life. Why do you like to focus on helping those people?
Shaw: Because my clients want to know about love. That's the way it's always been since I've been doing astrology since the early '90s. For most people, the reason they call an astrologer or an intuitive or a reader is first and foremost love, and then it's career, money, and then it's usually something to do with health and family. I would probably say over 90 percent of my business is on love and relationships.

I think we're all interested in that. We're all seeking to find the right love. Love ourselves. I mean, especially in the last 10 to 15 years with all the self-help books out to help you find your true self. That's all about love. I feel that if I can help just a few people at a seminar make a difference and change how they view love, perceive love, go after love, love themselves, then I've done a great service.

There are hundreds of people now who are attending our workshops. When I first started, I may have had 35 people. Now we're up to several hundred. I'd like to see that up to a couple thousand one day. The demographics are usually women between age 23 and 43. But, I have noticed that there are more men. Men used to call a lot on the phone for a phone reading, but they wouldn't show up at a conference. Now they're coming to conferences. They want to know about their soul mates and their love life, and when we do the past-life meditation, which we always do at the end of my conference, men have tears in their eyes and they feel overwhelmed by what they've seen or what they've experienced. I think that's great. More men are opening up to astrology and the New Age and the theory of past lives and soul mates. They're interested, too. I think they always have been, but now it's safer. It's OK to come out of the closet.

The love people are seeking may not necessarily be fulfilled with a soul mate, correct?
Shaw: A soul mate doesn't have to be your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your wife or your husband. It could be your daughter or your best friend. It could be a dog if you believe in your pets. Soul mates are two souls working together for the same soul purpose on a path, but when you meet somebody who you feel physically attracted to and you feel romantic love for, that's an extra plus. We're going to talk about soul mates on Saturday. We're going to talk about karmic marriages. We're going to talk about past lives. We may get into some twin flame work.

People are going to gain a lot of understanding about the most intense relationships and also learn why some relationships have ended. People may receive more clarity about what that person was doing in their life. Sometimes if you understand why that relationship ended, and what its spiritual purpose was, then you can let it go. You don't have to hang on for years with, "Oh, he got away," or "I should have married her." This way you understand what the reasoning was behind it and you can make peace with it and let some of those feelings go.

You have a daylong workshop on Saturday, May 31, in Minneapolis in which you're going to talk about things like this.
Shaw: We're going to do that and more. We're also going to learn to work more with the heart chakra. Some people know how to balance their chakras very well. Other people have no idea what the energy field is or the chakra is, but we're going to pay a lot of attention to the heart chakra, because if the heart chakra's not working properly, then there's almost an inability to accept and receive love.

I think it's going to be a real exciting, interesting seminar. It's going to be very in-depth, because we do have the whole day to work on it. When I was at the Edge Life Expo, I did a two-hour workshop and it was a good, but we speeded right along. We went through a lot of information in two hours. In this workshop, we'll be able to spend a whole day and get into some really heavy type of work.

You can take your time and integrate it a little more.
Shaw: Yes. And I'm hoping people will walk away with a feeling of satisfaction and receive tools and some self-knowledge they can use besides just finding their soul mates or discovering who their soul mate is.

It sounds like you'll be providing a space in which people can achieve some introspection, and it may not ever involve learning about astrology.
Shaw: This is for beginners. This is for somebody that has no knowledge of astrology except their birth sign. They just need to know what sign they are. Everybody knows what sign they are, I'm assuming. If they don't, I'll fill them in. This is not just about astrology. We're also going to use basic numerology theories. As long as you can add, you can join this workshop. We're going to use meditation. There will be talks on energy and crystals. It's a whole hodge-podge of things. It's not limited just to astrology, but because I'm a professional astrologer, I do use some of the theories in my work.

You mentioned that you have a book coming out in October. Tell us about that and any other projects we can look forward to in the near future.
Shaw: The book is the first one by Llewellyn and it's called Stargazer. It has everything in it from dream interpretation to astrology to numerology to beginner's palmistry. It's a beginner's book, but people who know a little bit about some of the New Age arts will be able to find some benefit from it, too. It's almost a 400-page book that will be good for younger people who are getting involved and also people who have an interest.

I'm working on a Tarot kit, also by Llewellyn, that will be out hopefully next year. I wrote the horoscopes for Alternative Girl, the new Llewellyn 2004 calendar, which will be out this August. I'm doing a national tour pretty much all over the country with the soul mate workshop.

Any closing thoughts?
Shaw: I believe that if you can make peace with your past, you can pretty much solve any problems that you have in the present, because a lot of our phobias, fears and concerns that cannot be explained in childhood or childhood trauma or experiences may have something to do with the past life that we're still bringing over. Most people will say, "Well, I had a good childhood. My parents didn't abuse me. I shouldn't feel this way. I didn't have anybody leave me, so why am I so scared that someone's going to leave me or why do I keep drawing challenging partners?" Well, it may have something to do with another lifetime, a past life, a lesson that your soul wants to learn. So, if you can dig a little back into the past and you're open to it you can learn a lot.

Our souls retain memory. By getting in touch with the inner self, we can create a lot of healing, not just for ourselves, but in our relationships.

And then, ultimately, it's our choice what to do after that point.
Shaw: Right. Once we have the information, then our subconscious may battle with our conscious. Our emotions may battle with our logic. But, if we're spiritually healthy and whole and we are driven for the higher good, then we can manifest any type of a life or relationship that we want. It could be wonderful -- and more and more people are seeking that. That's what I'm hoping to do with this is: give them more tools to use.

Maria Shaw, a celebrity astrologer and author, will be in the Twin Cities May 30-31 as part of The EDGE Speakers Series. She will present a Friday talk on "Discover How Old of a Soul You Are" at 7 p.m. Friday, May 30, and a Saturday workshop from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 31, on "Soul Mates, Past Lives & Present Loves." Both the talk and workshop are at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community, 44th and Upton Avenue South, Minneapolis. For tickets, go to ticketworks.com or call (612) 343-3390.

Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969 or e-mail editor@edgenews.com
Copyright © 2003 Tim Miejan

MAY 2003