  We establish a general thermodynamic scheme for cosmic fluids with internal
self-interactions and discuss equilibrium and non-equilibrium aspects of such
systems in connection with (generalized) symmetry properties of the
cosmological dynamics. As an example we construct an exactly solvable gas
dynamical model of a ``deflationary'' transition from an initial de Sitter
phase to a subsequent Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) period.
We demonstrate that this dynamics represents a manifestation of a conformal
symmetry of an ``optical'' metric, characterized by a specific effective
refraction index of the cosmic medium.
