Mercury-Neptune incidents

I will admit that I haven't followed the Karen Read case AT ALL except to have Shaun Kent of the Kent Law Firm explain parts of it to me on TikTok. I tried looking the case up and I just got confused. The story is confusing! I think that's the whole point. Anyway, this is about astrology, so put on your detective hats and tell me which planet is the one for notoriously clouding things and causing confusion?

It's Neptune! Where was Neptune when John O'Keefe died (and started the whole debacle)? Conjunct Karen Read's Mercury. What does that mean? It could mean a variety of things, including but not limited to the idea that maybe she doesn't even know what happened. But it could also be a whole sea of lies, or it could be the ability to somewhat successfully hide things. Or It could be clouded judgment. Mercury is the ability to perceive and be perceived. Neptune is confusion. The math is not hard there but the *meaning* is hard to tease out. It usually takes up to 10 years to fully process a Neptune or Pluto transit to a personal planet, because so much is happening at once and there are many misunderstandings (Neptune) and (in)tense situations (Pluto).

Additionally, Read had Jupiter conjunct her sun when John O'Keefe died. That can mean a variety of things: optimism, ego inflation, likelihood of taking risks. I've occasionally seen Jupiter-sun interactions in the charts of people who died by misadventure because they overestimated what they could get away with or they overestimated their tolerance level for substances, and Jupiter will do both to you. So, I don't know what it means but it's certainly interesting, isn't it?

So, was it an accident?

Recently, there was another incident in my realm where the person who caused it had a Neptune (and Saturn) transit to Mercury, and so two instances of this aspect in quick succession (for me, as I am not paying attention to Karen Read and finally decided to look up the whole debacle in April). The second incident may or may not have involved substances, and it was a bad one, but with Neptune on Mercury, it might never be clear what happened, exactly. With Neptune on Mercury, you have to become somewhat okay with the phrase "we may never know." Most people aren't cool with that, and I understand, but asking Neptune for an explanation is a fool's errand (partially because when Neptune does speak it's basically in riddles).

However, I should note that with Neptune, your tolerance level for substances of various kinds plummets. One of its calling cards is caffeine sensitivity when you didn't have that before, since that's probably the most commonly-used (acceptable) substance in our society, but really it's increased sensitivity to anything drug-like. So if you're impaired by some sort of substance but think you're not because you don't realize your tolerance level is down, well, that's more likely to cause accidents, yes? Or...just plain trouble. Something to consider.