Will Millar

5 days ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

They say he died in a bar fight, of all things. A dispute over a bill in a Deptford tavern and bam! Knife in the eye. That’s how the official story ends for Christopher Marlowe — playwright, heretic, spy, queer icon, and author of Doctor Faustus. But the story of Marlowe, just like the one he wrote, resists neat conclusions. You can’t kill the real Trickster. You can only invite him to dance with you. Marlowe didn’t just write about summoning devils. He wrote as if the devil had already summoned him.

1 week ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

“There are two Rob Roys. One lived and breathed. The other is a good story, a lively tale set in the past. Both may be accepted as ‘valid,’ but they serve different needs and interests.” —David Stevenson, The Hunt for Rob RoyLet me start with something simple: we’ve been swapped. Not literally. Not all of us, anyway. But some part of how we see the world — how we think we know ourselves — has been replaced. Silently. Enchantingly. And as if in a collective trance, we all sort of went along with it.

2 weeks ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

⸻When I started writing about Vatican II, I didn’t know Pope Francis would pass away before I hit publish. I had all my notes. I scribbled and copypasta’d all manner of things about language and ritual, about sacred architecture and the long, slow fading of institutional magic. I had, and still have, questions — big ones — about what happens when something ancient turns around to face a world that no longer recognizes it. But then the Pope died. And for a few days, I didn’t know what to do.

2 weeks ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

The Day the Spell BrokeFor nearly two thousand years, the Church faced east. The priest stood at the altar with his back to the people, speaking in Latin, invoking the mystery of transubstantiation with words most parishioners couldn’t understand but somehow still felt. Then, one day in 1961, he turned around. And just like that, the axis of the world shifted. It may have looked like a man simply changing position. But it wasn’t.

3 weeks ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

Part I. The Whisper in the DeepA recent discovery shook the scientific world, quietly, beneath our feet: an unknown microbial lifeform thriving deep within Earth’s Critical Zone. Published by The Debrief in 2024, the report details how scientists uncovered a previously unidentified category of microbial life — dominant in its subterranean ecosystem, thriving in nutrient-scarce, sunless depths.