This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Shugendo has never had one central authority. Its practitioners, yamabushi or shugenja, train and are ordained inside institutions that belong to two different Buddhist schools, plus one lineage that answers to neither. The Tozan-ha lineage is organised around Sanbo-in, affiliated with Shingon; the Honzan-ha lineage is organised around Shogoin, affiliated with Tendai; and Kinpusen Shugendo, headquartered at Kinpusen-ji on Mount Yoshino, stands as its own independent body. All three send yamabushi to the same mountains and recognise the same founding figure, En no Gyoja, without needing to agree on which Buddhist institution stands over the practice.
What unites them is the practice itself rather than the institution behind it: nyubu shugyo, structured entry into the mountains, treated as training the body toward the awakening Buddhist doctrine describes in the abstract. A yamabushi in the distinctive dress, a pom-pommed harness, straw leggings, a small cap and a conch shell blown to mark ritual moments, walks routes at Kinpusen-ji and Ominesan-ji in the Kii mountains, or at Dewa Sanzan's three peaks, Haguro, Gassan and Yudono, further north in Yamagata. Ominesan-ji keeps a rule unbroken since the early Heian period barring women from its sacred peak, a restriction the tradition maintains even as a separate nearby summit, Inamuragatake, has served since 1959 as a designated training ground for women.
The mountains themselves carry the doctrine as much as any text does. Kinpusen-ji and Ominesan-ji were jointly inscribed by UNESCO in 2004 as part of the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range, recognition of terrain that two Buddhist schools and one independent body all still treat as the actual site of the practice, not merely its backdrop.