What a "house" is
A house is a 30° slice of the sky as seen from your birthplace at your birth moment. The first house begins at the eastern horizon (the Ascendant or Lagna) and they proceed counter-clockwise.
Where a planet falls in the houses tells you which life area that planet's energy expresses in. Mars in the 10th house is a different life from Mars in the 4th.
Houses 1–6: the personal half
1st (Lagna · Tanu Bhava) — Self, body, identity. The mask you arrive in.
2nd (Dhana Bhava) — Earned wealth, speech, family of origin, food.
3rd (Sahaja Bhava) — Siblings, courage, short journeys, hands-on skill.
4th (Sukha Bhava) — Mother, home, inner foundations, vehicles, land.
5th (Putra Bhava) — Children, creativity, romance, the playful intellect, past-life merit (purva-punya).
6th (Ari Bhava) — Service, work, daily routine, debts, health challenges.
Houses 7–12: the relational and transcendent half
7th (Yuvati Bhava) — Partnership, marriage, contracts, the "other."
8th (Randhra Bhava) — Shared resources, sexuality, occult, transformation, longevity.
9th (Dharma Bhava) — Higher learning, father, guru, long journeys, philosophy, luck.
10th (Karma Bhava) — Career, public reputation, the visible work in the world.
11th (Labha Bhava) — Gains, friendships, elder siblings, the network you're embedded in.
12th (Vyaya Bhava) — Losses, foreign lands, sleep, dreams, liberation (moksha), what you must release.
How to read your own houses
Once you have your kundli (we generate them for free), look at: (a) which sign rules each house cusp, (b) which planets sit in which house, (c) what aspects (drishti) those planets receive. A skilled reader synthesises these into a portrait of the life — not a verdict, a portrait.