iVillage

First of all, houses are part of your horoscope, your natal birth chart. Simply put, the houses are a way to divide the space surrounding our birthplace into sections of space as seen from the place on Earth where we were born, that is: the space above us, the space below us, the space to the east of us, the space to the west of us, and so forth. We divide the entire space into 12 sections, like segments of an orange. Once we have divided the space around us, we look to see in what house or section of the sky the various heavenly bodies can be found, like the Sun, Moon, and planets, but also, the stars and any other astronomical body that might interest us. And since the planets are plotted in the zodiac signs, most house systems show where the particular house is (intersects) the band of the zodiac.