Dracula In 1983, McNally additionally suggested that Stoker was influenced by the history of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who allegedly tortured and killed between 36 and 700 young women. It was later a commonly believed rumor that she committed these crimes to bathe in their blood, believing that this preserved her youth. Báthory's castle was also located in the Carpathian Mountains, just as Dracula's, albeit in a different region. In her book "The Essential Dracula", Clare Haword-Maden suggested that the castle of Count Dracula was inspired by Slains Castle, at which Bram Stoker was a guest of the 19th Earl of
Women in Daoism because the alchemical process inverts the course of natural procedures. This luminous spirit leaves and re-enters the body, and then is further sublimated in the third stage to eventually merge back completely into cosmic emptiness (Despeux 2000: 406). Only the first stage differentiates practices between men and women. In "neidan" terminology, semen is called "baihu" (白虎, White Tiger) and menstrual blood is "chilong" (赤龍, Red Dragon). Instead of refining seminal essence and transforming it into energy, women refine their menstrual blood by progressively diminishing their flow and eventually stopping it altogether. This is known as "duan chilong" (斷赤龍, "cutting off