This is a discussion of a Maya bat god. For the candy by Ambrosoli, see “ZotZ (Candy)”. For a discussion of the fictitious planet, see “A Wrinkle in Time”.
In Maya mythology, Camazotz (/kämäˈsots/) (alternate spellings Cama-Zotz, Sotz, Zotz) was a bat god. Camazotz means "death bat" in the K'iche' language. In Mesoamerica the bat was associated with night, death, and sacrifice.[1]
In the Popol Vuh, Camazotz are the bat-like monsters encountered by the Maya Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque during their trials in the underworld of Xibalba. The twins had to spend the night in the House of Bats where they squeezed themselves into their own blowguns in order to defend themselves from the circling bats.
Hunahpu stuck his head out of his blowgun to see if the sun had risen and Camazotz immediately snatched off his head and carried it to the ballcourt to be hung up as the ball to be used by the gods in their next ballgame.[3]
The game between competing teams of players could symbolize the battles between the gods in the sky and the lords of the underworld. The ball could symbolize the sun. In some of these ritual games, the leader of the losing team would be decapitated, and His skull would then be used as the core around which a new rubber ball would be made. A common interpretation would emphasize the Venus cycle and the Maize God death-and-resurrection myth as core religious aspects of the game. The ancient Maya are believed to reenact, through the ball game, the mythic Underworld contest between the gods of life or fertility and the gods of death. This may have been an agriculture-related ritual or an apotheosis of the military conquest. Archaeologically, that two fold symbolism may be represented by the so-called ‘creation’ and "hux-’ahaal" or ‘three-conquest’ ball courts, such as the one in Naranjo.