On Sunday, October 25, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidential runoff with 51.74% of the valid votes to Flávio Bolsonaro's 48.26%, with 97.69% of voting sections counted. The margin exceeds four million votes and gives Lula a fourth term. In the first round on October 4 Lula had finished second, with 45.16% to Bolsonaro's 47.03%, and according to the EFE news agency it is the first time since the end of the military dictatorship that the second-place finisher of a first round wins the runoff. Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, had promised to pardon his father as his first act in office.
This week opens with an election decided between two nearly even halves of the country, a very Libran scene. Venus, the planet of preferences and values, turned retrograde on October 3 at 8° of Scorpio, a day before the first round, and on Sunday the 25th at 3 a.m. (Mexico City time) it returned to Libra, the sign of balance between two sides and of choices between two options. A Venus retrograde reviews what had been chosen, and in Brazil the order of the first round was reversed: the candidate who was second finished first.
That same Sunday the 25th, at 10:12 p.m. (Mexico City time), the Full Moon arrives at 2° of Taurus, opposite the Sun in Scorpio. Taurus speaks of what we have and want to keep: stability, work, money that is enough. Scorpio speaks of what is shared and of deep change. A full moon shows what is already complete, and this one does so over a result that closes a campaign. The Moon is square Pluto in Aquarius, the planet of power and collective structures, and on Monday the 26th around 7 a.m. the Sun makes the same square to Pluto, a transit that keeps the theme of power and change alive in the first days after the count.
Mercury, retrograde in Scorpio since Saturday, October 24, asks us to review information calmly before treating it as closed: the final figures, what each side says and what was promised during the campaign. Mercury and Venus both turn direct again on November 13, Venus at 22° of Libra and Mercury at 5° of Scorpio. Until then the sky favors rereading what was decided, seeing which values were chosen and what we are willing to uphold.