A Riddle for Essence Mappers

This is a Riddle I posted on Holy Worlds:

“Here is the riddle:

What is this Essence map of?

No need to ask:
Hint 1: The riddle is a trick question.
Hint 2: The title of the essence map gives you a clue.
Hint 3: That second hint might make things more confusing for some.

Have at it all!

An Essence named Alaiva

–What they were doing, Underground:
A broad beam of white light
Keep here
Peak of an ice hill
Keep me away!
Blossoming in the winter storm
The peril of the Washerman at the ford of the creek
Different characters who do not know each other
I know, walk not
Robin redbreast
Japanese war fan
White shirt
A dark street with moonlit clouds above
A black watch with slow moving hands
A Hawaiian volcano outside a city
Under the awning outside a restaurant at a table, talking, forgetting about food
Numismatology
A broken tooth
Okay, now I thought it was right.
Nocturnal butterflies
The Wishlink
Copepod
An ear cut from the head
A frigid wind
Oh keep me!
A hang drum played in an empty room
Never say “dark”
A glass eye
Enter the key
Two eyes looking this way and that in unison. Then they see you
Taming the mouse with three eyes
A glass case for my experiments
Come here
Slowly slicing across the bridge of your nose
Sneezing blood
The battery inside
The color Blue, Black, and Red
Take me to the place
In the night season I win

–What is happening:
Take this and eat it
An open mine shaft
The keystone of an high arch
The swiftness of a swallow
A hand resting on a holstered gun
A hymn book found on the bottom of a river
A crumbling stone edifice
The light of headlights suddenly in your eyes at night
The Devil named Hure
I cope this way
Eyes glaze over
Rotting potatoes
The Ringsmith cult
Fish was spelled “fixh”
The tower named Jonas
A fly finding a new corpse in an unlikely place
Help me take
Knowledge of the darkness of a thing beyond the light turned back at its surface
How cold darkness is
I can’t put something back
The sun burns the streets
The head of a girl who wonders
A hard house, made of big stones
A bruised belly
A cold smell
Holding an infant sword
What I know about your belly
Help me up
Bacterial soup
Is there ever an end
Keep the lock
Hard mouths
Never take a Dark Fantasy that goes into a room
A speaker on which dreadful things are played, and it cannot be silenced
A speaker playing dreadful things, underwater, on the bottom of a river
Eating hot tongue
The hero named Noah
A good taco with fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and onions
The word “Never.”
Bitten
An evil kind of forgiveness, and the good kind, good versus evil
Smelling different soaps
Ask a doctor to take the fishhook out of your ear
Repeat after me, Light
Oh! Do not be hard!
Do not be heard

–Evermore:
Carl does not know about it
Tangled in the garbage underwater
Naming the new land, and all of its cities and people
Lunkhead wins
Uncouth fishhook
Turn away Steven
A temple redeemed from heresy
A cap lying on the ground
Under the arch, under the keystone
Recoping
Metallurgy at midnight
Lights along the way
The master of the city
Happy blood
Taking away the darkness to a different place
Into the horizontal pit
I would like to heal you
An atlas of lies

–What we, Longing:
Put my hand in your pocket

–FINALITY:
A metal picture

There it is, though without any brackety things I suppose it is more of a freestyle map? That is just my question, it is not a riddle.

Please critique! What are your favorite parts? Do you have any questions?

Also, what do you think of the format I used? To me it seems to focus more on the essence rather than the structure of the map.”

~

These were the rules on Holy Worlds:

“So that more people get a try at it, pm me your guesses. Once enough people have tried it, I will post the answer, and who got it right (if they do not mind)(and if anybody does get it right).

And there are prizes:

The first person on the Fantasy forum to guess the riddle, the first person to guess the riddle on the Sci-fi forum, and the first person to guess it on the Historical Fiction forum, get to choose from:

A picture drawn by me,
Or an in depth review of one of their works.

Are there any questions?

Meanwhile you can post your discussion of the essence map itself in the thread.

)Clears throat. Editors pm me quotes of any typos you find and I will tell you whether or not they are supposed to be there. *shakes finger, grins*(“

~

These are the hints I have posted so far on Holy Worlds (reading them is optional of course):

“My sister Juliet has solved the riddle!

That proves that it can be done.

But here are some more hints:
Hint 4: the riddle really is a trick question
Hint 5: the riddle is a really trick question
Hint 6: if I reword the riddle I might as well tell every one the answer”

 

“Juliet did not bother reading the essence map to figure out what it was an essence map of.”

 

“I have had a lot of guesses, so I think I shall add another hint:

I thought of the riddle long before I began the actual essence map.

This hint may help, and it may not. Tell me if you find it interesting!”

 

“I remembered to post these hints so often I almost started thinking I already had. Thank God I fully remembered, that is, I have posted them.

Here are some more hints:

Before I thought of the Riddle I had a few large essence maps to which the Riddle could apply. I just made a new one for fun. The same with the Hint map.

The part of the essence map titles which could give you a clue is the way they are worded:

An Essence called ___

A lot of the guesses, if they were correct, would mean that the Riddle was not a trick question. (They are still good guesses because they evidence other, interesting trains of thought.) However, you can find out exactly what the answer is from knowing that the Riddle itself is a trick question. It is really quite simple.

The Riddle is:

What is this an essence map of?

And it is a trick question. You need know no more than that.

The biggest hint I have yet given is that I made two essence maps for the Riddle, and:

It is not of a different part or perspective of the same thing, but of exactly the same thing.”

 

 

Labels Introduction

The original idea for X was that you could take two (or more) metaphors, each with its own range of possible essences (like two circles), and put them side by side. The part of the essence circles that overlapped was the essence that you were trying to get across.

But now, with a Label, you do not have to stick with the overlap default. You could say that one attribute subtracts from its sibling attributes.

Or adds itself.

Or obscures it like a cloud. Or stabs in like a knife. Or drips over it like blood. Or anything else you can think of. The context of a label is an element, and elements can be anything.

So, how does it work? Simply. It is positioned as the last piece of the Tag – after the Alias and Title, you – and preceded by a splat (asterisk: *).

Title:Alias*Label [

Or as the only part of the tag present it would look like this:

*Label [

Though it is an element, it is not necessary to enclose it in the angled brackets, as it is already enclosed by the splat and the beginning delimiter of the attribute.

Usually.

But there is this thing called ‘Doubled Labels’ that makes angled brackets necessary sometimes.

A doubled label is what happens when you want to say how a label itself affects its attribute. And the syntax would be: Splat – Splat – Label of the label – Label – Beginning delimiter of the attribute.

So the only way you can differentiate the label of the label and the label of the attribute is by one orboth of them being enclosed in angled brackets. Like so:

**Label of the label<Label>[

Or:

Spirit:Beta**ALLEGORICAL<A kraken hidden in the sea> [

What is that ALLEGORICAL in capital letters? That, is a Keyword.

Which will be explained in another essay.

(Oh, just for clarification: when you do not use a label on an attribute (labels are optional, same as the rest of the tag), the default is Intersect for elements (the overlap idea you know), and Add for the higher attributes.)

Have fun, and be creative!

ECSS++ Changes Overview

X++ (the shortcut for saying ECSS++) is the upgrade of Xbasic: the principle stays the same, but you can do more with it. The additions are extensive in quantity, though, and adequate explanations of all of them would not really fit into one essay, so this is going to be general overview of their functions. Separate tutorials will have to be written for the syntax, strategy, etc. of each one.

So, in X++ there are:

• Aliases: a new part of the Tag, which allows you to reference to an attribute from another attribute. That may not sound very exciting at first, but if you actually start using them, and have a little imagination, they can add an entirely new dimension.
• Labels: another new part of the Tag, which allows you to specify exactly how one attribute affects its siblings, instead of having to stick with boring defaults.
• Carets: which allow you to use an unlimited number of relatively unconnected pieces of the various parts of the Tag. Very, very useful.
• Keywords: special uppercase words that have reserved meanings, for use in labels or elements.
• Dashes: which are rather like a short hand for embedding a child element in another element. Particularly nice for color elements.
• Slashes: which allow you to link two metaphors into one element. Distinctly helpful.
• Pipes: which are similar to parentheses in mathematical computations – essential for clarification of ambiguous ordering of slashes and dashes.
• Escape Marks: which escape sections of syntax, just in case you want to use parentheses, or dashes, or even, maybe, quotation marks, with their usual functions instead of their X functions.
• Notes: which allow you to, as it were, converse with the reader of your X normally, bestowing helpful warnings or injunctions or anything else you might want to say into the Xmap without messing it up.

And that is all for now – though – maybe – in the indistinct future – you might start hearing mentions of Xelite. But, that is another story for another time.

High Deeps

Greetings, here is an essence map I made for illustration purposes mostly.

Difficulty: 3/10

< Rwëmün legend >
The Height {
  Darkness [
    Density (
      < Flowing cloud >
      < 97%⁹⁷ >)
    Depth (
      < Inside a black rider's hood >)
    < A claymore >]
  < The high glittering of a purple cloud of stars >
  Sharpnness [
    < An assassin's knife, gilt and hung up on a wall >]}
The Deeps {
  < Pale weariness >
  < Forever trickle >
  < 96% >
  The Top [
    Luminescence (
      < 49% >
      < Shade >
      < Charcoal rubbed on paper >
      < Slate grey/Raven black >)
    Detail (
      < Adobe walls >)]
  Next Down [
    < One star in the night >
    < The night owl >
    < 63% >]
  Still lower [
    < An octopus eye >
    < 81% >
    Complexity (
      < A caving maze >
      < A skeleton >)
    < Purple midnight/A wheel's troth >]}
The Mystic {
  < A scarab > }

Enjoy!

Lady Rwebhu Kidh

An Essence Page for ECSS(X)

Greetings,

We use many ways to map essence, and one of them (other than ECSS) is to make abstract (or not so abstract) images. We sometimes reference them in our ECSS maps, and they are very good for that. But sometimes we just make them for fun, like this one.

The Essence of ‘Blade’ (a short story in prog)

Greetings,

This is a fragment from an essence map I am writing for a short story I am writing. It is a mystery, and this first bit illustrated some of the more advanced and difficult-to-write-and-read uses of ECSS.

Difficulty: 8/10

2nd layer^menace*ABSTRACT {
  motion^growth*\gamma\ [
    *87% - a dark stain spreading beneath all the ocean waters
      <a massive nest of evil tentacles reaching, and grasping, and holding>
    *36% - a high tower with eyes seeing all
      <a car racing down alleys in a frantic attempt to escape>
    *50%< |a gauntleted hand holding/a stone table bearing| - a bloody mace>
  ]
  color:ALPHA*an undercutting blow that takes off your legs [
    thought*SUBTRACT - 100% - scraped by grumy claws from a mossy wall of an old torture chamber
      <crystal - ceramic - sterile - pure - white>
    health:BETA*89.6% - a sword slowly penetrating your vitals and grating  (
      *war<a ruddy dagger encrusted with blood>
      *heavy<a slowly falling leaf onto the mold on the ground>
      *98% - bright, blinding flash
        <blackness - pupil of a murderer - a hole under a basement>
      *a misty shadow wafting over you, breaking into shards
        <a burning vitality consuming you from within>
    )
  ]
  density:GAMMA*buried alive in a confining coffin that is slowly collapsing from rot [
    depth*an avalanche of boulders falling down a steep slope of boulders (
      <lying on your head in a narrow pit slowly filling with water>
      <a forest of tall, wide, evergreen trees>
      <Mariana trench>
    )
    motion (
      <a heavy river of thick mud quivering as it rolls onward from large creatures inside it>
      <a herd of elephants shoving through a narrow gorge>
      <an anaconda forcing its way - |through dense underbrush / through high branches| >
    )
  ]
}

With joy and peace in Christ,

Sir Emeth Mimetes

ECSSbasic Introduction

Felicitations,

Essence is not a system of attributes, metaphors, classes, and elements. Neither is it a classification for anything. We did not make it up. It is ancient, originating from the beginning of the creation. You see, there is essence, and there is ECSS (Essence Cascading Style Sheets). And when one does not understand what essence is, it is hard for one to understand what ECSS is.

Patrick (Tsahraf) says that essence is “The unique impression upon one’s emotions by a set of sensations.” To quote Jay (Sir Emeth) it is “… an artistic impression or idea, no matter how nebulous or exact…” And Noah Webster wrote “Mr. Locke makes a distinction between ‘nominal’ essence and ‘real’ essence. The ‘nominal’ essence of gold is that complex idea expressed by God; the ‘real’ essence is the constitution of its insensible parts, …” all of these quotes reflect facets of what essence is.

There are many different ways of portraying or articulating essence. Poetry, music, drawing, sculpting are some examples. Making essence pages with Gimp is another (see the avatar gallery). And we (my two brothers and I) made one up ourselves. At first we called it essence, but that was very confusing, so we put our heads together (over the Webster’s 1828 dictionary) and came up with ECSS, a type of Essence Mapping. So that is what it is called now, and this is how it works.

I will here outline ECSSbasic, which is a corrected version of our earlier form of essence mapping. We have recently improved and expanded ECSSbasic to become ECSS++, which we will introduce you to in future posts. For now, be satisfied with ECSSbasic.

The ECSS system is a system to organize separate metaphors in an attempt to describe, present, or create an essence in the mind of the reader. This is done by establishing a hierarchy of Topic, Aspects, Classes, Characteristics, and Elements which is then used to group the metaphors into different focuses.

An example, you may wish to use the metaphor of a budding flower for a girl, named Lucy for convenience sake. This metaphor of a budding flower is first restricted within the topic, Lucy. Then, since you only mean that the budding flower applies to her spirit, the metaphor is placed under the aspect Spirit. The budding flower represents the freshness of the spirit of Lucy, and so it is placed within the class, Freshness. Then, the budding flower is only meant to be the light of the freshness, so it is placed within the characteristic Light. And the Element is the metaphor itself: budding flower.

Lucy

Spirit {

Freshness [

Light (

<budding flower> ) ] }

But the metaphor of ‘budding flower’ is still imprecise, though focused, though the hierarchy, to a certain point. The metaphor’s essence has a range of meanings, which can be represented by a circle. We want to make it smaller, lessening the possibility of confusion in the reader. But you cannot do this very easily, so we have devised a way to do this in ECSS.

You take the circle (the range of possible essence meanings of a metaphor) of another metaphor, and state that where those two circles intersect is the essence that you are trying to describe in the ECSS.

So we can add another metaphor as a sibling of the budding flower: a sunrise.

Lucy

Spirit {

Freshness [

Light (

<budding flower>

<a sunrise> ) ] }

Alright a little explanation about that {](>bleah stuff.

Each attribute (Aspect, Class, Characteristic, or Element) has its own delimiter. This is what encloses an attribute’s content, enabling the powerful nesting ability to function. Aspects use { curly braces/brackets.} Classes use [ square brackets.] Characteristics use ( parenthesis.) Elements use < angle brackets.>

The delimiters always follow the title of the attribute, and enclose all of its contents. Easy ’nuff.

You can put any attribute in any attribute that is a higher level than itself. Elements can go directly under Aspects. Classes can go inside Classes. Characteristics cannot go inside Elements.

You can have as many sibling attributes as you want, regardless of the type of attribute. You can have several Aspects, several Classes, whatever.

Any questions are very welcome.

Cordially,

Lady Rwebhu Kidh (with collaboration)

Essence Explained

Greetings,

This is a simple, basic outline of what essence is. The purpose is to help you to better understand what is going on so that you can dig further into the power of essence mapping. This is only a bird’s eye view of the subject, so it should be easy to follow.

Everything has an essence. Everything has always had an essence. Everything has its own essence. And everyone perceives that essence in a different way from everyone else.

Whenever we see, hear of, or read about something, we immediately attach to it a load of connotations that we normally associate with that thing. That load is its essence as perceived by us. Everything has a range of different essences that different people might apply to it.

If we wanted to make sure that someone is perceiving the same essence that we are, we run into difficulties. The different things that people have done to overcome these difficulties have a very wide and diverse range of variety.

We have added one. And we like it.

Remember, everything has an essence. We have not invented essence. We have merely invented a new way of telling other people about what we perceive a thing’s essence to be like.

The basic principle underlying most, if not all, of the ways of articulating essence that are out there, is simple.

You list several things, hoping that in their conjunction people will see what you are getting at.

So if I have a red background, and then I put a knife on it, most people will probably think of murder. If I put a rose on it, however, most people will probably think of love.

Now, if I put that same knife on a fish, people will think either of dinner, or of endangered species. Hopefully not the latter.

If I put the rose on a piano, people might think of a concert, if on a coffin, they will think of death or a funeral. Etc.

Movies, pictures, poetry, and books all try to use many different things put together to convey an emotion or an idea into you without actually spelling it out. Sometimes it would be easier to just spell it out, but they want to hide it and be more artistic. Other times it is just plain impossible to spell it out.

Our system of essence mapping (ECSS or X) that has so befuddled so many people is very simple in principle: we are merely listing different things in a tidy way to help them all tell you an idea of the essence of something in a very efficient way.

Just a list.

That is all.

Just an essence.

Does that help?

With joy and peace in Christ,
Sir Emeth Mimetes