You’d think finding a god would be easy. Now, I don’t mean that in the born-again “finding God” kind of way. I mean actually finding someone who hundreds maybe even thousands of people consider a god and who walks among us.

It all started one sunny day as I was out pencil shopping along a busy street. A little old lady with a kind smile handed me the paper pictured above. The title read, “The message from the world of spirits: William Shakespeare.” Thinking, “Now, that’s a name I can trust!” I read on.

■ Endorsed by several famous dead people
I won’t bore you with the details. Basically, the Bard of Avon said when his days of writing about and analyzing the human spirit were over, he met with someone named “Queen Senyu Ryuka” who showed him a whole lot of happiness in the afterlife. She showed him the true root of human love and emotion that he could never see in his physical life.

At the bottom of the paper was a URL for me to learn more about this lady who could teach Shakespeare a thing or two. The website using True Renaissance in its address was filled to the brim with Japanese, Korean and English writings which included several other messages from beyond the grave. John Lennon, Joseph Stalin, Dostoyevsky, George Washington, Jesus, and Audrey Hepburn were all there to name only a few. Here are some brief samples:

・ “I came to the spirit world and watched images of all the sins that I had committed on the earth, and for the first time I realized what I had done. I cried out as if I were crazy.” (Adolf Hitler)

・ “I have learned from church that ‘man was born with a right to love and with a right to be loved’. However, in the present world love was not accepted and I was not able to get a right to love. It was a miserable life.” (Michael Jackson)

・ “I liked Japan. My instinct knew that Senyu Ryuka sama would be born in Japan, didn’t I? Since I had a longing for Japan and a desire to draw women, I became an artist.” (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)

・ “We are running around and playing in the womb of Senyu Ryuka sama’s love. God said,”since Senyu Ryuka sama fulfilled a victory, all mankind can experience such joy with their physical body.” The whole earth is God’s theme park.” (Walt Disney)

So the Sun God Senyu Ryuka had a lot to offer in the way of celebrity endorsements, but throughout the website I couldn’t get a sense of who Senyu Ryuka was exactly. In fact, there wasn’t any mention of anyone living on the entire website.

■ No Followers?
There was a form I could fill out with a promise that a “representative in my area” would get back to me if I left an email and phone number. I didn’t feel comfortable getting that in touch with a representative near me, so I went looking for more information while keeping a healthy length of fiber optic cable between myself and anyone involved. On the side of the website was a Twitter scroll. However, going straight to the twitter account revealed something strange.

This religion literally had no followers.

But that didn’t make sense. Who made this fairly well-built website in three languages and where did that lady who gave me the paper come from? Going back to True Renaissance in search of life I found pictures from an event that took place on 31 March, 2013 at the Cuneta-Astrodome in the Philippines. According to the website around 12,000 people attended this thing called The Cosmic Tenet Cosmic God Senyu Ryuka Sama: The Great Cosmic Advent Festival of Resurrection for the Opening of a New Age, and judging by the pictures there were somewhere around 100 dancers and musicians from America, Korea, and the Philippines in front of a packed stadium.

I never tried starting a religion, but I have to image it’s difficult to pick up 12,000 followers with a lady handing out papers, a website, and a Twitter account less than one year old.

■ Sun God Senyu Ryuka in the flesh

“The Sun God Senyu Ryuka Sama is the substantial God but who looks and has the same figure of a human being. Since the beginning of human history for the first time, God has finally come down to the earth substantially and so therefore, the kingdom of heaven will finally be established on the earth. Many messages from the spiritual world testified about this. The most honorable person who should be loved by humanity is the Sun God Senyu Ryuka Sama. This message should truly be accepted by each person as God’s message.” (True Renaissance)

My first thought was that this Great Cosmic Advent Festival was just a made up thing and they actually stole some images from Cirque du Soleil or something. However, searching around the web I could find evidence it really did happen and indeed was attended by thousands of people.

At first all I could find was some facebook posts by people who worked on the special effects for the show which were pretty snazzy. There were a couple of brief clips from the event put up on YouTube featuring Senyu Ryuka herself!

Here she is making her entrance:

This video shows her literally being put on a pedestal with more lasers and pyrotechnics:

Unfortunately there were no videos from people with better seats so we could get a good look at her. My luck changed after some further search though, I could find one photo of Senyu Ryuka by Jacques Lutia Mbaki on the website Congo Planet taken in January of 2011.

Well, now we can put a face to this up and coming diety, Senyu Ryuka. We also confirmed that she had quite a few followers around the world. Still, how did she pull all this off?

■ Unification Church
Younger readers might not be as familiar with the Unification Church since recently they’ve been relatively quieter than in past decades. Founded and led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon until his passing in September of 2012, it gained controversial fame for its mass marriage ceremonies as well as it’s involvement in socially conservative political parties and news media outlets both in it’s home of Korea and abroad.  Here’s is Rev. Moon presiding over a mass marriage known as a “blessing ceremony.”

It would appear that Senyu Ryuka may have managed to work her way up the ranks in this religion before leading her own flock of disgruntled ex-Unification Church members. Based on some scattered blogs and message board postings related to the Unification Church, followers who began to feel disillusioned by the religion began to congregate around Senyu Ryuka sometime in the early 2000’s. In Japan, some members posted messages growing suspicious of how the money sent to the church was being used.

“The fighting in the True Family and church is beyond belief. How can we call ourselves the unification church, when we are disunited? How can we preach peace to the world when we hate one another?”

“This idea that we must be perfect, that we must rid ourselves of fallen nature is what attracted me to Senyu Ryuka Sama’s teachings in Japan. She is teaching how to fulfill what [Rev. Moon] has been asking us to do, which is mind and body unity – which is to realize the perfect man.”

These quotes were taken from the tumblr post in 2011 by a group called, “How Well Do You Know Your Moon,” who claimed to be “aligned with a rising movement behind Senkyu Ryuka Sama.” They later mention her again in the following post:

“I am writing this because I want you to know what is happening in Japan. Why and how more than three thousands brothers and sisters are changing their lives… t is only surprising to me that with such a tremendous revolution going on in our church in Japan – the mother or Eve nation, very little is known in the elder son nation – the United States.”

I’d have to agree with them on that point. It is surprising that a splinter group, thousands large, was forming out of a very rich and influential religion, and yet there is virtually no mention of it anywhere.

The blog post also mentions the date 13 January, 2013 which was a significant date in the Unification Church which some say was meant to be the end of the world, the death of Rev. Moon (surprisingly only a few months off), or a time of great spiritual cleansing. Fittingly it seems that Senyu Ryuka chose around this time to hold the cosmic event seen above.

What Sun God Senyu Ryuka the Queen of God’s Kingdom is doing right now or where she might be is anyone’s guess. So, next time you see a forty-something Japanese woman standing on the subway or behind you in line at the bank, try to be extra nice to her. She might just be an intercontinental religious leader with several thousand people worshiping her.

Source: A lady on the street (Japanese)
Direct References: True Renaissance (Japanese/ English/ Korean), tumblr – How Well Do You Know Your Moon (English)
Senyu Ryuka Photo: Congo Planet – Jaques Kutia Mbaki
Sun Myung Moon Photo: Wikipedia
Videos: YouTube – ProBeatBox1987 1, 2