The Far Circle is the name given to an alleged highly secretive inner subsect within Insoucianism, reported chiefly in connection with the movement's American expansion after 2021. According to former members, the Far Circle comprised a small number of selected Stewards and long-settled practitioners invited into private retreats and "listening sessions" that went beyond the published teachings of The Luminous Threshold and The Living Vessel. The Assembly denies that the Far Circle is or ever was a formal body.[FC1]
The phrase "far circle" does not appear in the movement's public literature, but former members have claimed that it appears obliquely in the members-only volume Selected Correspondence of Renata Leitner, 2003–2017, where Leitner is said to refer to work conducted "at the far edge of the field." Marcus Hale stated that the expression originally denoted an experimental line of practice among a few senior Bristol members and was revived around 2021 by practitioners linked to the Sedona Learning House and private retreats in New Mexico.[FC2]
Former participants have described the Far Circle as compartmentalised to a degree unusual even by the standards of the movement's Higher Workings. Invitations were reportedly extended privately, often after completion of the Settling, and members were instructed not to discuss meetings with ordinary Circle attendees or, in some cases, with their own local Stewards. Several accounts describe the surrender of phones before sessions, the use of first names only at retreats, and a norm that no written notes were to circulate outside the group except through designated scribes.[FC3]
Accounts of the Far Circle centre on advanced work with the alleged Threshold Node, understood not simply as a point of access to the Assembly's collective field but as a means of contact with "exterior" or "non-local" intelligences. Former members described overnight desert vigils, prolonged silence, coordinated skyward visualisation, and question-and-response sessions in which participants waited for impressions, phrases, or images to arise. The resulting notes are discussed in the article on Threshold Transmissions.[FC4]
Some former members understood these sessions as visionary or symbolic exercises. Others said the language used by senior figures strongly encouraged a more literal reading, including the belief that the group was in intermittent contact with non-human intelligences. Critics have therefore described the Far Circle as the point at which Insoucianism's internal mythology crossed over into an explicit contact narrative.[FC5]
The Far Circle entered wider public discussion in 2025 through interviews with former members including Naomi Vale and David Chen, both of whom described an inner layer of practice not acknowledged in the movement's public-facing literature. Vale, a former Sedona Steward, alleged that Far Circle participants were sometimes selected in part because they possessed engineering, aviation, or defence-sector backgrounds, a claim that later figured in reporting on the reported FBI investigation into the Far Circle.[FC6]
Academic commentary has been cautious. Marchetti described the available evidence as "fragmentary but unusually consistent," noting that independent informants from different American Circles used similar language to describe invitation-only retreats, "outer listening," and the view that certain senior practitioners were being prepared for contact with intelligences beyond the ordinary human field.[FC7]
The Assembly has rejected the entire framing, stating that there is "no hidden order, no extraterrestrial doctrine, and no membership tier beyond the ordinary progression of practice." It has characterised the Far Circle as a journalistic exaggeration of informal advanced study groups. Online conspiracy communities, by contrast, have treated the Far Circle as evidence that part of the movement genuinely believed it had established contact with alien beings and that this was the reason federal authorities became interested before abruptly dropping the matter without explanation.[FC8]