Eight Sections of Magical Illusion 幻化八部

Eight Sections of Magical Illusion (Wyl. sgyu 'phrul sde brgyad) —

Zursto Konchok Tsultrim says that the division in eight sections of the Web of Magical Illusion tantras comes from Vimalamitra. He gives the following list:

1. The Secret Essence Magical Illusion (སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་གསང་བ་སྙིང་པོ), that teaches how mind and wisdom are self-appearances (Vajrasattva's Magical Illusion)
   
2. The Great Web of Manjushri's Magical Illusion (འཇམ་དཔལ་སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་དྲྭ་བ་ཆེན་མོ), a teaching encompassing all scriptures
   
3. The Magical Illusion in Eight Chapters (སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་བརྒྱད་པ་), that teaches the mandala
   
4. The Lama Magical Illusion (སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་བླ་མ་), that mainly teaches empowerment conferral
   
5. The Appendix of the Magical Illusion (སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་ལེ་ལྷག་), that mainly teaches the samaras
   
6. The Magical Illusion in Forty Chapters (སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་བཞི་བཅུ་པ་), that mainly teaches the activities
   
7. The Goddess' Web of Magical Illusion (ལྷ་མོ་སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་དྲྭ་མ་), that teaches how display actually manifests
   
8. The Magical Illusion in Eighty Chapters (སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་བརྒྱད་བཅུ་པ་), that teaches the extensive enlightened qualities
   

This is the list of the Zurpa tradition.

The other exegetical tradition of the Guhyagarbha is based on Rongzom Pandita and the Omniscient Longchenpa's approach. For Dorje Ziji (Longchenpa), the Eight Sections of Magical Illusion are the eight categories of Vajrasattva's Magical Net of Illusion, from among the Four sections of Magical Illusion. In his list that contains nine titles, the first six are also found in the list above:

1. The Glorious Secret Essence, that teaches how mind and wisdom are self-appearances
   
2. The Magical Illusion in Forty Chapters, that teaches all the activities
   
3. The Magical Illusion in Eight Chapters, that teaches the entire mandala
   
4. The Lama Magical Illusion, that mainly teaches clearly empowerment conferral
   
5. The Appendix of the Magical Illusion, that fully teaches the samaras
   
6. The Magical Illusion in Eighty Chapters, that teaches the extensive enlightened qualities
   
7. The Vajra Mirror Magical Illusion (རྡོ་རྗེ་མེ་ལོང, རྡོ་རྗེ་སེམས་དཔའ་སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱི་མེ་ལོང་), that teaches clearly of the colours and hand implements of the deities
   
8. The Ocean of Magical Illusion (རྒྱ་མཚོ་སྒྱ་འཕྲུལ་དྲྭ་བ་) that gives an illuminating explanation of the generation stage
   
9. The Consequence Magical Illusion (ཐལ་བ་སྒྱུ་འཕྲུལ་དྲྭ་བ་) that clearly teaches the path of method.