The Carpocratians (Greek: Καρποκρατιανοὶ) were a Gnostic sect partially based on Platonism that was established in the 2nd century AD and existed until the 6th century. It was named after Carpocrates of Alexandria, its founder, and gained its final form in the writings of his son, Epiphanes. Only fragmentary sources remain about their beliefs and practices, and proto-orthodox Christians of the time mischaracterised their theology to discredit them, accusing them of debauchery.

The Carpocratians were Gnostics, believing in a dualism of evil matter and good spirit, and pursuing gnosis, the esoteric knowledge needed for salvation. As others of the belief system, they believed all beings in the world strove towards Monas, the Supreme Principle or Primal Being, whom Carpocratians called the Father of All, or the One Beginning. The visible world was created not by him but by inferior angels far removed from the divine source, known as the 'fabricating powers' or the 'builders'.

Human souls existed before being trapped in material bodies, orbiting around a 'spiritual sun' on the 'plain of truth'. After initially working with God, souls were imprisoned by the 'builders' in bodies and can only be free after living every form of life and committing every possible act. Based on Luke 12:58, Carpocrates said that the Devil, or 'the accuser', dragged souls to the highest 'builder', who then gave them over to a messenger angel. This being imprisoned souls in bodies until they 'paid the uttermost farthing' (Matthew 5:26, King James Version), won freedom and re-joined God.

Every imprisoned soul retained the capacity for remembering their natural state (Greek: ἀνάμνησις, romanized: anamnesis) to a different degree. This knowledge is the only one through which humans can be saved, every other moral judgment being subjective.

Carpocratians rejected the material world, which they believed to have been created and ruled by evil. To prove their belonging to a superior spiritual realm, they claimed to communicate with demonic spirits. They also practiced a form of magic, making love potions and using theurgic incantantions, as they considered themselves above the 'builders'. This also gave them the power to exorcise, understand dreams, and cure disease. For worship, they erected statues and painted brightly coloured icons of Christ, the apostles, and other eminent men such as Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle, becoming the first known Christians to depict Christ. They honoured these figures in a temple on Cephalonia.

They professed the transmigration of souls (Greek: μετεμψύχωσις, romanized: metempsychosis), which they might have lifted from Indian or Pythagorean sources, believing that a soul could only be freed if he remembered his former, better existence. Then, he could defy the evil spirits of the world and reach eternal rest in contemplating the Supreme Being. They rejected the idea of bodily resurrection, and the entirety of the Old Testament.

Carpocratians revered Jesus as a man whose soul had not forgotten its origins in the higher sphere of the perfect God. Believing that Jesus had been a Gnostic, they strove to imitate him, but considered him to have been an ordinary human being, not the son of God. In the Carpocratian world view, Jesus was seen as excellent in holiness and virtue, and possessing a great elasticity of mind that enabled him to remember his (and all other humans') previous existence with the Primal Being. With his extraordinary strength of soul and through the power of contemplation, he obtained divine power to perform miracles which he then used to overturn the evil religion and break free from the control of the Jewish God who had dictated it.

It was taught that anyone could become equal to Jesus with enough effort, and that he could even be excelled by someone with an even purer soul, or who despised the material world even more than he had. Every Carpocratian believer was thought to resemble Jesus to a large degree, and it was claimed that their best believers attained his level of transcendence and rose above the apostles.