Archontics

Epiphanius provides an example when he writes of the "Archontics": "Some of them ruin their bodies by dissipation, but others feign ostensible fasts and deceive simple people while they pride themselves with a sort of abstinence, under the disguise of monks" (Panarion, 40.1.4).

Sometimes Gnosticism is used narrowly to refer only to religious groups such as Sethians and Archontics who seem to have used the term gnostikoi as a self-designation, even though early Platonists and Ebionites also used the term and are not considered to be Gnostics.