The Gormogon

The Gormogon was the leader of an extinct secret society of ritualized cannibalistic serial killers and the main antagonist during Season 3.
== Background and Development ==
He was introduced as the main antagonist in the third season and was first mentioned in the season premiere, "The Widow's Son in the Windshield", and has made appearances in the form of teeth marks on bones examined by the Jeffersonian scientists. His first on-screen appearance was in "The Knight on the Grid", although his former master, Arthur Graves, appears earlier in that episode, and his late apprentice, Jason Harkness, appeared in the season premiere. 
In the Season 3 finale, Dr. Brennan finds that Dr. Zack Addy had lied about some of his earlier conclusions, leading Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth to realize Zack is the apprentice. The team finally tracks down Gormogon thanks to information given by Zack, and Booth kills Gormogon in his home; he has not been given a name, and he has been described by Sweets as "a nobody; an invisible man who was angry at history for not seeing him."
In Season 12, the case of the Gormogon is reopened after Zack confesses to being innocent in the murder of Ray Porter. Instead, the Gormogon's previous apprentice committed the murder before being killed by Gormogon himself for failing him. With the help of the information in the Gormogon Vault and Doctor Gordon Wyatt, Doctor Jack Hodgins was able to figure out how the Gormogon disposed of the Apprentice's body and locate it buried beneath an acacia tree in The Steal in the Wheels. With the new evidence, Zack is exonerated of murder in The Day in the Life, but is determined to still be guilty of aiding a known killer, the Gormogon. As a result, Zack will have to spend thirteen more months locked up for the assistance he gave the Gormogon before he can be released back into society.
== Known Gormogons ==
*Arthur Graves - Now old and at a nursing home, Arthur Graves is the oldest Gormogon shown in the series. He also appears to have been the most successful one, having killed enough people to assemble a whole skeleton. Before he left everything to his apprentice, he pulled out all of his teeth.
*"The Master"- The newest Gormogon. He was first seen wearing a motorcycle helmet and outfit, but his face was later shown in the last episode of Season 3. According to Zack, he is very fast and very strong. He was killed by Seeley Booth.
*Jason Harkness - The first apprentice to appear on the show. He was found because of the diamond implanted in his tooth.
*The Apprentice - Seen briefly in the end of The Knight on the Grid, during which he jumps at Ray Porter, the lobbyist, with a knife in his hand. In The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond, Zack reveals that that particular apprentice was killed by "The Master" the same night as the murder of Ray Porter in order to open up the slot for Zack as his apprentice ("There can only be two"). His body is eventually located by Jack Hodgins years later with help from Doctor Gordon Wyatt.
*Zack Addy - Technically not a Gormogon, he was "The Master's" apprentice for a few months. He gave "The Master" information about the lab, made a set of false teeth for him out of canines taken from the bone storage and also claims to have aided him in the murder of Ray Porter. After Brennan refuted his logic, Zack gave up Gormogon's location, leading to his death. As a result of his actions, Zack is given a life sentence for the murder of Ray Porter and several more years on top of that for aiding a known killer. After being framed as "The Puppeteer", Zack recants his confession and is exonerated for Porter's murder by the Jeffersonian team. However, his aid to "the Master" means that he still has to serve out the remainder of his sentence for that crime, thirteen more months at the time of Zack's appeal.
== Modus Operandi ==
When particles left on a victim's skull led Dr. Brennan and Booth to a vault in an old bank, they discovered tapestries, paintings, books, and other artifacts related to a number of mystical orders and traditions, including Kabbalah, Freemasonry, and Gnosticism. The key feature of the vault was a silver skeleton arranged in a "widow's son" pose, a position known to the ancient Greeks as one of sacrifice. Parts of the silver skeleton had been replaced with actual bone, which bore teeth marks from two different individuals, suggesting ritualistic consumption of flesh. The vault also yielded a tapestry whose pattern corresponds to specific locations in Washington, D.C. and to tarot cards showing different archetypes, such as the Musician (Gavin Nichols) and the Bishop (Father Cooper). The map provides a schematic for Gormogon's activities, including the geographic location of the sculpture and of another, older sculpture and the residence of Gormogon's old master, and the order of archetypes which are being integrated, via their bones, into the sculpture. The bones chosen have some significance for the owner in their personal or professional lives. Additionally, the victims killed by Gormogon during the events of season 3 had all lost their fathers at a young age, making them literal widow's sons. Gormogon's main weapon of choice appears to be a intricately decorated dagger called a Cannelure. In reality, "Cannelure" is a term used by the French for a Fuller Dagger.
In The Steal in the Wheels, Doctors Gordon Wyatt and Jack Hodgins noted that the Gormogon was a slave to ritual in everything that he did with regards to his murders.
After murdering The Apprentice for failing him by not being as good of an apprentice as Zack Addy, the Gormogon disposed of his remains using a Masonic ritual regarding betrayal. The Gormogon placed the Apprentice's body into a reverse Masonic coffin and buried it under an Acacia Tree on the western part of the original boundary of Washington, DC. Though the Acacia Tree symbolized the immortality of the human soul, it was also poisonous and inedible, the perfect place to dispose of an outcast apprentice. Due to the Apprentice's failure, he would've been considered poisonousness and inedible, symbolically. The Gormogon also could not add him to the Widow's Son skeleton as the Apprentice was effectively a traitor to the Gormogon for his failures and wouldn't be deposited into some shallow grave somewhere due to the Gormogon's obsessive need to follow rituals with his murders.
== Victims ==
Two skeleton sculptures have been found, one of which was constructed by Arthur Graves and the current Gormogon and was completely made out of bone (implying that he had killed several people to put it together), the other by Jason Harkness and the current Gormogon. Not all the victims have yet been identified, but at least one bone in each sculpture was added for its significance to its owner. The three victims named below all lost their fathers at young ages, making them "widows' sons" and thus doubly symbolic as a sacrifice to the Gormogon. They were all involved with a trip to the Anatolian region of Turkey, and associated with the Knights of Columbus. It was also compared to the Order of the Sith from the Star Wars saga, where there were always two, a master and an apprentice. If an apprentice (Darth Maul in Star Wars) fell, the master (Darth Sidious in Star Wars) would replace him with a new one. Coincidentally, Gormogon also had three apprentices in the series, like Sidious had in Star Wars before his death (Darth Maul, Count Dooku [Darth Tyranus], and Anakin Skywalker [Darth Vader].)
*At least five prior victims whose bones were included in the silver skeleton. At least three of the tarot cards prior to the Musician (Gavin Nichols) were, in the order they were mentioned, the Architect, the Martyr and the Orator. Their connection to the bones was unspecified.
**A manubrium 
**A sternum 
**A right rib
**A left femur 
**A right tibia 
*Gavin Nichols, a violinist. His left little finger, essential for his art, was added to the silver skeleton, and he corresponds to the Musician tarot card on Gormogon's schematic.
*Father Douglas Cooper, a bishop. His kneecaps, essential in prayer, were added to the silver skeleton by Brennan as part of an attempt to provoke Gormogon into trying to take the skeleton back while it was being transferred so that they could capture him, and he corresponds to the Bishop tarot card on Gormogon's schematic.
*Ray Porter, a lobbyist. As would be expected judging by his profession, his mandible, being a component associated with speech, was sent to Dr. Brennan. He corresponds to the Corruptor tarot card on the Gormogon's schematic. When Dr. Zack Addy was revealed as the current apprentice of Gormogon, it was established that he was Porter's killer. Zack pleads guilty to the murder and is placed in a psychiatric rehab facility. He later admitted to Sweets that he hadn't actually done the deed himself. In The Hope in the Horror, Zack confesses the truth about Porter's murder to Booth and Brennan. In The Steal in the Wheels, Doctor Jack Hodgins manages to recover the body of the Apprentice, Porter's actual killer with Porter's blood being found on the corpse's right sleeve cuff. In The Day in the Life, this is enough to exonerate Zack of Porter's murder during his appeal.
*The Apprentice. The actual killer of Mr. Porter, he was seen for a split second in the end of The Knight on the Grid. Though Zack later claimed responsibility for Mr. Porter's killing, he later admitted to Sweets that he only assisted in the killing and that the Master (the current Gormogon) killed the former apprentice and presumably cannibalized him to open the position for Zack. In The Hope in the Horror, Zack convinced Brennan and Booth to re-open the investigation to prove that Zack is innocent for the death of Ray Porter after Zack determined that he could not have committed murder as he previously believed. In The Steal in the Wheels, with help from Doctor Gordon Wyatt and Angela Montenegro, Doctor Jack Hodgins was able to recover the body of the Apprentice who was murdered by the Gormogon shortly after killing Porter and then disposed of in a Masonic ritual related to betrayal. His remains and Porter's blood found on them help to exonerate Zack for Porter's murder in The Day in the Life.
*An unnamed SWAT officer.* When Booth and a SWAT team raided Gormogon's home to arrest him, he threw a knife into the chest of one of the team members, apparently killing him. 
== Notes ==
*Gormogon had the longest lasting negative impact on the team as he still haunts the characters in Season 12 since he was first introduced in Season 3.
*Due to his outright hatred of secret societies, fraternal orders, and his belief that one must go to extremes to combat grand scale conspiracies, Gormogon could be seen as the anti-Hodgins or an extreme version of Jack. While Jack Hodgins has numerous conspiracy theories and is skeptic towards secrecy and fraternal orders, he would never stoop to murder to set things right through his eyes.
== Trivia ==
*Before the season finale reviewers and fans speculated that the audience has actually already met him, perhaps being FBI psychologist Dr. Lance Sweets. This belief was partially validated later in the season when the show's executive producer, Hart Hanson, stated in an interview with EW.com that Gormogon or his apprentice is someone the fans are fond of. In the season finale, this statement is confirmed when they identify Zack as Gormogon's apprentice.
*It was stated in an interview with Eric Millegan that the identity of Gormogon's apprentice was not originally known by the cast and directors when he was created as a criminal. After the writer's strike, the producers of the show were forced to make budget cuts and therefore named Addy as the "someone the fans are extremely fond of".
== Inspiration ==
The Gormogon's were an Anti-Freemasonry order of the 18th century. They are mentioned in scattered writings of the era, and accusations of association with them may have been used as a political weapon, as the very existence of the order involved a rejection of Masonic ideas. http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/gormogons.html The Gormogons However, only the name has any relevance on the show, as Hodgins borrows it to refer to the killer for his dual reverence for and apparent dislike of secret societies and fraternal orders, including the Knights of Columbus and the Freemasons. Hodgins' and Sweets' understanding of typical practices among orders, such as the Master-Apprentice relationship, ritualistic cannibalistic meals, and sacred geography used in the architecture of Washington D.C. by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, inform the ongoing investigation of the murders.
== References ==
== External Links ==
*Who were the Gormogons in reality?
Category:Characters
Category:Recurring characters
Category:Season 3 characters
Category:Serial Killers
Category:Gormogon Order
Category:Doppelgängers
Category:Cannibals