Philosophy-religion of ancient Munatani origin, possibly dating from the Second Aeon HM, 7000 years ago or more.

Philosophy

At the heart of Dromeism is the fatalistic philosophy: all things turn into their opposites. Night turns to day, life to death, ice to water, fire to ashes. It is a dualistic cosmology of light and dark, a balance necessary in the universe that makes life continue. Without it, the universe would stop turning.

From this basic concept a diversity of philosophies developed. Most influential was the ideal of the Drome. Similarly to Plato, the Dromians believe there is a pure foundation of ideal templates underlying everything in the universe.

Every object is made based on a number of smaller templates, so in a simple illustration, a hexagon is made up of six triangles, each made of successfully smaller triangles down to the smallest, three points, each point made up of smaller fundamental elements, and so on.

The fundamental element is the drome, represented as a sphere, half white, half black, rather like the Tao. A form of entropy turns all things into its opposite.

Natural Sciences

Dromianism was a unified philosophy of science, ethics and religion, and contributed greatly to the promotion of sciences. Attempts to isolate the "drome" and use the theory engendered a form of Dromian alchemy. Dromians developed techniques of reducing substances to their elements, and recombining them in different combinations to form new different chemicals.

Later revolutions in microscopy 'proved' the theory in cellular biology. All beings were made up of smaller spheroid particles: the dromes of the body. Algae and micro-organisms were clusters of cells, which divided in two, doubling themselves. Large dromeals could be seen to be made of smaller elements: the organelles, or dromeals.

Everywhere naturalists looked, be at the night sky, the natural world, or the cellular level, the pattern of the drome seemed to proliferate, and the theory was applied everywhere, including art (proportions made up of simpler geometric shapes), and even politics (see Caban).

Great Dromeian Philosophers

Gamanang (2737-2820 HM)

Gamanang was the most prominent of the Dromian philosophers, particularly since his written works survived to modern times. He was a student of the Plosi school of astrology in Shjil, a school of thought that considered the micro scale to be unimportant in comparison with the grand scale of the heavens. Only the heavens, they said, had a true influence on the world; on the seasons, weather, the turn of history. The micro-world of the drome could only be of use to tinkerers, metallurgists and engineers, a base science.

Consequently, natural sciences were divided into two realms: the cosmological, ruled by the astrologers, and the pragmatic or technical, made up of metallurgists and alchemists.

With a simple but elegant insight, Gamanang in a stroke unified the macro and micro scales of thought. The drome, he reasoned, was a fundamental particle of which all things are made, hence they must be assembled in various patterns to make jigsaw-like pieces that fit into anything. The drome is most likely a sphere of light and dark halves, in a state of constant change.

The heavenly bodies, including the world (a thought generally accepted by the Plosi astromancers), are spheres that rotate, and circle each other. Therefore, he proposed, are the heavenly spheres not merely reflections of the drome? Using lenses he compared a rock and a mountain, a rock and a grain of sand, a trickle of water and a mighty river, and proposed: are these things not all identical in structure, but just on a different scale?

Gamanang's cosmology is a fractal one, in which all things are merely repeating patterns at differeing scales. His theory revolutionised philosophy and sciences in successive years, uniting the jealously guarded ideas of various groups. For example Dromian microscopy merged with astronomy , to create a relatively accurate theory of atoms, in which elementary particles are held in atomic orbits.

Theology

Its influence on theology was the pattern of consciousness. Lenses could show that humans are made up of smaller units, cells. They have a limited sensibility of their own, but make up a larger, conscious moral being. By the Dromeian theory of repeating patterns, on a larger scale humans must be part of another intelligence on inconceivably vaster scale, of supreme cosmological intelligence. Disciples of Gamanang, such as Ro-Punimang, used this to prove the existance of God.

Cosmological Applications

Wilder theories extrapolated both upwards and downwards, to the macro and micro level, proposing infinite universes and planes like our own, on different scalar levels. The world is a spherical drome, spinning in a space half light, half dark: so might not the dromial particles that make up our world be worlds themselves? Might the drome of our on world not be an elementary particle in a vaster universe?

Gamanang's revolution spurred a flowering of Dromian philosophy that lasted two centuries, before it declined and degenerated into a variety of theological animism, a reaction to deteriorating climatic conditions.

Caban's 'Drome of the Polity'

Gamanang also influenced political thought, most importantly Caban. The writings of Mi Ben Caban were revolutionary political philosophy, but it is uncertain whether he was an actual individual. It is more likely that Caban 's theories were created by a collective of political radicals, who dangerously applied Dromianism to government and political thought.

The essence of the theory is: Each Man is a Nation; Man and State are one.

When a person makes a decision, we all have thoughts and opposing thoughts, themselves each consisting of pro and cons - an internal dialectic, each thought being a drome. The State, and the world, are merely the drome of Man writ large: composed of conflicting voices which eventually come to a decision. Only by this decision-making process, weighing and discounting arguments to come to a unified resolve, can a State, or an individual, be assured of taking the correct course.

Caban's theories are applied as a form of participative democracy, or Polity. It was expressed in various ways, mostly by citizens discussing at a local level and representatives proportionately handing their collective decisions to the State. Caban, or the Caban as a collective, instituted some small revolutionary states which were vibrant, anarchic, and short-lived, either combusting by themselves or being crushed by central governments. However elements of the Polity were incorporated into local government, and flourished for several centuries.

Dromeian Principles and Ethics

There are various principles common to Dromeian faiths.

1. Reincarnation, wheel of life. Balance brings about harmony, an end to the struggle, eternal peace at the end of time. Celebrated most famously in the Golden Spheres, half black half gold, symbols of change which are kept in constant rotation to maintain the cycle.

2. Celebration of fatalism, acceptation of death as part of life, an ever-turning wheel. Particular popular in the militarist east, Biinmos and Torthien.

The Greymen Holocaust

The 'Greymen' were an itinerant cult that pervaded Munatan. They believed that the drome, rather than being a natural law, was in fact an illusion, a trap. Mankind, alone in the pattern, has conscious thought and is not merely subject to the constant cycle of change. Therefore the purpose of his awareness is to elude and transcend this cycle, through pursuit of stillness and calm. The philosophy erected communes, or monasteries, in the mountains and places isolated from the world, stripped of all ornamentation and external stimuli. Monks gave up all their worldly connections, wore grey robes and spent time in deep meditation. Some sects practiced voluntary castration, blinding, cauterisation of the nasal passages and other means of sensory deprivation to rid themselves of worldy distractions.

In Biinmos Greymen ideology became the foundation of a short-lived Messianic cult. With the climatic instability that heralded the Little Ice Age, around 2930 HM , Greyman converts prophesied that the world was beginning a new cycle. The world would change from a world of heat lit by the hot sun, to a frozen waste lit only by the Son, the night star. These prophesies were intended to recruit new members to the cult but instead made messiahs of certain crazed prophets preaching the end of the world in which millions would die, backed up by myths and actual histories of civilisations like Miarris, wiped out by flood. Thousands converted to this Greyman Antidromianism, whose prophets competed in wild claims to be able to save them. It culminated in promises of 'escape' from the dark world to come, in mass suicide.

News of the insane atrocity spread around the world, and in the north it forever associated Dromianism with insane murder and extremism. Wild tales told of entire regions being depopulated in insane religious fervour. Thousands did indeed die, but nowhere near the exaggerated claims of Orrorans.

This negative propaganda led to Dromeian writings being banned and burned, and they have been viewed with suspicion ever since, despite the technical revolutions they may have otherwise engendered.