Once again the Lausers have been meddling with the order of the universe, this time it's rendered all the old ways of doing essence maps as obsolete, reducing them from standardized systems to freestyle systems. That being said there are a couple of freestyle systems that people have found friendly in the past that I thought it would be wise to offer a basic introduction to. This not only shows you possible systems you can use for yourself, but it will probably help you decode the various essence maps found in the Freestyle Maps forum.
The first style is one you'll see used in most of the currently posted essence maps. It began as
an explanation by White Raven of one of the Lauser's earlier versions of essence mapping. Later it was established as it's own unique style dubbed "X Beginner." For a long time, it was the style that most people started learning on and many still use it because of it's familiarity.
However, during the recent push for more simplified versions of essence mapping called "The Essence Rebellion", Eruheran devised a simplistic system known as
Simple Essence Mapping, or SEM. SEM has a few more intricate traits than the newly released FirstX, but it is still a less complex system than X+. Before the very recent introduction of FirstX, SEM helped a lot of people who hadn't been able to wrap their minds around other essence mapping systems in the past to finally grasp how to make their own essence maps.
So there you have it, two of our more popular systems of freestyle essence mapping. Have fun!
In Christ,
Jordan