Whole-sign houses, from the rising sign
Jyotish commonly uses whole-sign houses. The rising sign is the first house, the next sign the second, and so on around the twelve rashis. That is cleaner than many Western house systems, and it is one reason the birth time matters so much. If the lagna is wrong, every house door moves. Work, marriage, children, and money are then read through the wrong rooms. A few minutes near a sign change can rehouse the whole life. That is not fussiness. It is the architecture of the kundli.
What each house holds
The first is body, appearance, and the way a life begins. The second is speech, food, family resources, and savings. The third is siblings, courage, and short journeys. The fourth is home, mother, land, and inner peace. The fifth is children, intelligence, romance, and past merit. The sixth is debt, illness, conflict, and service. The seventh is partnership and the open other. The eighth is transformation, inheritance, and what is hidden. The ninth is dharma, teachers, and long travel. The tenth is career and public action. The eleventh is gains, friends, and fulfilment of desire. The twelfth is loss, foreign places, sleep, and the rooms you leave. Those are starting meanings. A graha in a house, and the lord of that house, write the actual sentence.
The question chooses a house
When you ask in a familiar messaging format, the question chooses a house. Love leans on the seventh and the fifth. Work leans on the tenth, and often the second and eleventh for money. Home and mother lean on the fourth. Children on the fifth. Study can run through the fifth and the ninth. A reader working with VedicAstrology.com keeps the reply in that part of the kundli so the answer does not wander across the whole sky. You can open another thread for another part of life. That is how this house is built: one thread, one room.
Houses from the Moon as well
Jyotish also counts houses from the Moon, a second lagna of the mind. A planet that looks quiet from the rising sign can be loud from the Moon. A reading that only uses one count misses half the map. Self, the first glance on VedicAstrology.com, is written with both in view. Then you ask, and the houses that belong to the question come forward. Date, time, and place of birth are what make those houses real.
