The Carpocratians constituted a Gnostic sect, but one which harbored some rather unique ideas. Those ideas made this sect an especial target of “literalist” Christians.
Basilides and Valentinus weren’t the only Alexandrian sages to establish a Gnostic sect. This one was founded by a native of that city named Carpocrates and it was built upon, further, by his son Epiphanes. All the places this sect operated in, aren’t entirely known. They appear to have maintained a presence in Alexandria, and had a center of worship on one of the Ionian Islands off of Greece’s west coast. That Irenaeus wrote about them, suggests they must also have been in the central and western Empire. They endured into the 6th century which also suggests they must have resided in a number of locales.
Like other Gnostic sects, the Carpocratians believed that human souls were of divine origin but had become trapped within the physical realm and were condemned to transmigrate into other bodies after death. This followed a reincarnation notion of Hellenic origin. It had been part of the Orphean religious tradition and an element of Pythogoreanism, among other schools of thought. The physical realm had been crafted by beings called “the Builders,” who’d entrapped those human souls in this cycle. The way to break free of it, Carpocratians taught, was by living every kind of life there was for a human to live, and to engage in every kind of act that a human might engage in.
In addition, they exhibited their own spiritual superiority over “the Builders” by dabbling in magic, going so far as to summon — and attempt to control — demonic spirits. Like other Gnostics, they dismissed the Jewish deity YHWH as one of the primary “Builders” whose purity codes and commandments were an affront to the divine nature of the human souls compelled to follow them. Like nearly all Gnostic sects, Carpocratians fervently rejected the Jewish scriptures.
Although this sect was founded by a man and further fostered by his son (who was ultimately deified by them), it appears women could act as leaders. A Carpocratian community was reportedly founded in Rome by a woman named Marcellina.
Unlike most Gnostic sects, Carpocratians didn’t view Jesus as an emanation of the divine (which they called “the One Beginning”) or a messenger sent by Him/Her/It. Instead, they considered Jesus to have been a man, but one who remembered the origins of his own soul in the company of the One Beginning. For them, Jesus was special and wise, and even capable of performing miracles; but in the end, he was no more divine than any other human being.
Although Jesus had been born into a Jewish family, Carpocratians believed that he hated being connected with Jews or Judaism, and at his earliest opportunity, fled for other environs. Among other things, he spent time in the Temple of Isis in Egypt learning about the One Beginning. Later he conveyed those teachings — and some of his own — to his apostles. Carpocrates claimed to have learned from them.
As noted, Carpocratians’ dismissal of Mosaic Law as profane in the face of the One Beginning, appears to have caused them to dismiss the notion of externally-propounded morality in general. Good and evil were for humans to decide, on their own. That, too, was another of the ways they showed their contempt for the physical realm and exhibited their own divine nature.
Eventually this would lead “literalist” Christians to accuse Carpocratians of sexual debauchery and licentiousness. This may or may not have been deserved, given that they explicitly rejected monogamy and considered marriage to be yet another of “the Builders’” imprisonment tools.
Members of this sect also worked at emulating Jesus and other great sages of the past (Pythagoras, Plato, etc.). They showed them in artworks and even erected brightly-colored statues of them. Despite being Gnostic “heretics,” Carpocratians are very likely the first Christians to have depicted Jesus in art. They even claimed to have taken their image of Jesus from a likeness that had been drawn up on the orders of Pontius Pilate.
Their practice of magic in all likelihood ran afoul of Roman authorities since magic was mostly outlawed in the Roman Empire. Their nature as a secret sect — as was the case for virtually all Gnosticism — probably protected them more than a little. Christians were mostly concerned about their reputed sexual liberties, and fought against them whenever possible. Despite the opposition to their methods, though, this Gnostic sect endured for quite some time into the 6th century.
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