Sun Drop. That's what skeksis drink.

Fantastic! Elastic. 

My friends are passionate and intelligent.  My friends are good friends.

To talk about essence in terms of Wittgenstorm is a good start.  Like a word, an essence is a sign, used and defined discursively. It is an attempt to make concrete an opening.  I may have said something pithy to Jordan once about the only meaning being action.  That was a dangerous statement, but one I tend to stand by in spirit, (pun intended.)

Here's why: all action is perceived through displacement.  Action is "by" and "through."  That makes it seem like it is dependent on matter to exist. "The medium is the message" and all that 60's jive. Well, all flames need wick, or fuel, but action is also a transforming process.  Whatever matter was beforehand, it changes, so once again, the action is the altering motion, not the medium... The one certain thing is that action needs matter to be perceived.  God moves on the water, casey jones...

Hmm.  Meaning is always discursively given, so possibly essence is that point where analysis falters, where either language or its speaker lacks the surgical acuity to make it happen.  Here's where things like "differance" and "the sublime" come in.  I find it ponderous to keep depending on essence's being concrete for it to be valid.   Essence is always historically defined or spiritually defined.  Both depend on things other than themselves to be located.  Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.  If we can step back and understand what processes have tended to define essences (like "womanhood" or "democracy") we can start to understand why they are more concrete and rigid than they could be...

Essences are tools.  Like words they are vacuums we abstract into tools.  If they fit into a practical syntax, they gain commerce.  If they bridge a gap we need to conquer, they last and gain trust, if not substance. We're certainly more cozy when we can lean on essence like a trusty can of Pabst.  Drink from it, but it's only helpful if we swallow, and there's old action again.  Any action, like cycling, that seems to be irreducible, it's usually because nothing else can be like it.  I read on a Starbucks cup today that "baseball games are not like church, they are like baseball games."  Now even my analogies are commodified.