The Smoked Mirror - Issue #19

February arrives quietly, which is how it gets away with so much.

Feral Heart Season isn’t about impulsive action or dramatic confession. It’s about something subtler and far more dangerous: noticing what’s already alive inside you before you negotiate it away. Most people don’t suppress desire outright. They edit it. They rename it. They file it under “not important” and move on.

This first week is about recognition. Not courage. Not expression. Just the moment when you realize there is something you want that you’ve been pretending not to.

Question for the week:

What do you want that you keep pretending you don’t?

Sit with it. We’ll come back to it later tonight.

February 5–11

The week unfolds under a waning Moon, moving from Waning Gibbous into the Last Quarter on February 9, then thinning further into a Waning Crescent. Each night, less light remains. This is not an energy of initiation or expansion. It’s an energy of subtraction. What’s unnecessary, performative, or falsely maintained begins to lose its grip—sometimes quietly, sometimes with irritation.

As the Moon approaches Last Quarter, internal pressure often shows up as restlessness or impatience. Not because something needs to be done, but because something needs to be stopped. This phase exposes habits that once served a purpose but now only drain attention. Avoidance becomes harder to justify. Emotional truths that were tolerable under brighter phases start to feel heavier when carried alone.

Occultly, this is a week for release through recognition. Not banishing. Not cleansing. Simply noticing what no longer wants to be fed. The waning crescent that follows favors honesty without audience—private realizations, quiet acknowledgments, and internal course corrections. If something feels ready to fall away, let it. This isn’t loss. It’s space being made.

If you keep telling yourself you’re “fine,” eventually your body will stop believing you.

Clarity doesn’t arrive through willpower. It arrives when you stop arguing with what’s already there.

The Spell of Unmanaged Want

You’ll need:

• One candle (black or red if you have it, any will do)

• One grounding stone (obsidian, hematite, or a simple stone from outside)

• Five uninterrupted minutes

Correspondence:

Element of Fire, governed by sensation and impulse.

The Working:

Sit comfortably and cast a very small circle—no gestures required, just a clear mental boundary. Light the candle and hold the stone in your non-dominant hand.

Breathe slowly and bring your attention to the body. When a want or desire surfaces, do not name it. Do not interpret it. Simply notice where it lives physically.

If your mind starts to explain, return to sensation.

When the candle has burned for a few minutes, thank the want for revealing itself. Close the circle. Carry the stone with you for the rest of the week as a reminder: not everything needs to be managed to be real.

If you’re new here, or if you haven’t wandered through in a while, there’s a wide spread of tools, texts, and talismans waiting at

https://shop.dankmor.com

You’ll find everything from wearable reminders and ritual-friendly apparel to spell-adjacent goods and shadow-themed pieces that live comfortably both on altars and in daily life. A few favorites readers keep returning to:

Browse slowly. Nothing here is meant to rush you.