Carpocrates has the honour of being one of the more interesting of the heretics. He is viewed as a �saint� by those who hold to modern Gnosticism. He is from very early times. Both Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria have a lot to say against Carpocrates, which would put him likely in the middle second century, part of the main wave of Gnosticism. His was a very logical theology, given his presuppositions. His presuppositions were more Platonic than Christian, and they lead him to an interesting place.

Carpocrates had a theory that involved reincarnation, but in the Carpocratian sense reincarnation was not an evolutionary, soul-growing opportunity such as it is presented in most Hindu and some Buddhist variants of the idea. No, Carpocrates claimed that reincarnation was a punishment:

The soul transmigrates from body to body to make sure it pays every penny of evil to its jailer, the devil, according to the Carpocratians. As you can imagine, this sort of teaching would lead to pretty virulent antinomianism�or to be more precise anomianism and libertinism. They basically had no law other than to experience every possible thing under heaven so that they could pay off the debt of being captive to the devil and the creating angels.

This comes sort of close to Nietzsches ‘Ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichens’, except that Nietzsche claimed that the ultimate purpose of life is to ‘live your life in such way you would wish life would return eternally’. That sort of makes Nietzsche’s stance the exact opposite of the Carpocratian.

However, how exactly would one be able to do such a thing? Carpocrates claimed that ones soul had to experience ‘everything existing under heaven’ to pay off the debt to the jailer, the Demiurg. This. for him, included a wide range of sexual activities and indulgences. By conquering every mode of existence, existence itself becomes unnecessary.

The Carpocratian stance is weird, but interesting. It’s far more credible than the traditional Hindu idea that we grow more and more experienced with every incarnation. I certainly see no evidence of that around me. The whole idea is greatly problematic. It’s way too linear a concept to be somehow applicable to the very non-linear phenomenon of time.

Nietzsches idea, that one should simply live in such way that one would wish life to return eternally, is brilliant in its simplicity. It does not require reincarnation to be true. It tackles eternity at its very core: life already is eternal, here and now. Eternity is all around us. Heaven and hell: all right here. Nietzsche’s stance might be the ultimate hedonistic stance, which is ironic, because Nietzsche, essentially, was very far from being a hedonist himself. On the other hand we see Carpocrates, the ultimate hedonist, paying off his debts to the devil by committing every sin possible, in order not to reincarnate. It does sound like a lame excuse to commit sins, doesn’t it. It’s the ultimate irony of life: the Spartan Philosopher Nietzsche preaches Hedonism at its best and the Hedonist-avant-la-lettre Carpocrates teaches, well, some disguised form of the Original Sin.