this container is used to transform a luminessence to an incandessence, or vice versa. Tavid Dennant gives these out in guild lobby, just say "items" to him follow by "cells".
Yep, exactly the same function as the Temporal Polymorphic Cell, only that you get 16 freebies from Tavid Dennant as apposed to spending 1000 Chronobines on a TPC in The Void.
The culling vortexes are the reverse of what I would consider intuitive. The essence type returned is the opposite of the vortex type, so an incandescent culling vortex extracts a luminessence from the armour.