About the Author
My name is Alexander Kolesnikov. I was born in 1961 in beautiful Kyrgyzstan which was at that time a part of the USSR. My background is in engineering and science. I spent more than twelve years in the Soviet Army, the last part of that period working as a researcher in an institution near Moscow.
At the same time, I was always interested in various mysterious subjects. My parents were very unusual people, we often had guests like clairvoyants, astrologers, psychics, yogi - and this is in the years when Communist ideology was very strong; this kind of people was very much frown upon.
We also had from time to time exciting texts on yoga, astrology, numerology and many other subjects appearing from some mysterious sources. Sometimes they were hardly readable because people were spreading these texts between their friends by making several copies on a typewriter. Owning or using for personal purposes a copier was illegal in those years in Russia.
One of my responsibilities was to make a copy of every text for ourselves so I spent a lot of time in my childhood and youth typing on a primitive mechanical typewriter.
Returning to the times when I was in the Army, with the arrival of Perestroika I decided that I should use my brain for something more peaceful, left the Army and became a full time student of esoteric knowledge, making my living as a translator of esoteric literature. After a few years, I was already teaching astrology and lecturing in many cities of Russia. I was doing a lot of research, writing articles, and in 1997 my first astrology book was published in Moscow. It was my version of my Teacher's introductory lessons of astrology.
The year 2001 was marked with the arrival of my second astrology book, also in Russian, titled (approximately) "Teach Yourself Astrology with Computer and without It". In that book, I attempted to find an approach to teaching astrology that would benefit from general availability of computers and the Internet.
My first very simple website went online around the year 1996, I simply made available online the articles that I have written by then. A few years later I created a massive web resource in Russian Galactica.ru. It was full of dynamic content, interactive programs based on astrology and numerology, free lessons of astrology and numerology. That website is still online but it was left neglected after I moved to the UK and many of its dynamic features aren't working anymore. I do have a plan to bring it back to life at some point however.
After moving to the UK, I created a new website, this time in English, named Lunarium. There, I have recreated some of the most popular features of Galactica.ru and also added some new features, like Universal Lunar Calendar and Planetary Hours Calculator. I still have a few interesting and useful features in mind for Lunarium.
I also started working on a series of free lessons of astrology as a part of Lunarium. With time, however, I decided that it wasn't a good idea to pile up everything together in one place. Lunarium can be a bit overwhelming for those who is only beginning to study astrology, and the lessons were not very easy to find there.
That is how I came to the idea to create this site. The plan is to use my more than a decade of experience in teaching astrology and create a series of lessons that will allow an absolute beginner to learn the most important fundamental principles of astrology. Later, when all the basics will be covered, we might go further and, who knows, maybe we shall do together something interesting and useful in astrology.
If you want to give me a feedback or to discuss something, please feel free to write to alexander@what-is-astrology.com.