Camazotz = "The ancient bat god appears to have first appeared in Mexico around 100 AD, where he gained a literal cult following among the Zapotec tribe. The Zapotecs associated bats with death and the night for reasons that would have made a lot of sense at the time. After all, bats have always inhabited the caves around what were known as the Sacred Cenotes, which ancient Mesoamericans believed to be a gateway to the underworld.
Seeing them flying out of what you believed to be hell would probably be enough to scare anyone into adopting a rather shaky view of the mysterious winged creatures. From these nocturnal encounters with bats, legends of a bat god were born and began to circulate among various tribes of native peoples of Mesoamerica. Commonly depicted holding a sacrificial knife in one hand and a human heart in the other, Camazotz wasn't really destined to be a warm-hearted god.
Camazotz's name literally means "death bat" in the Kʼicheʼ language. The Kʼiche', a Maya people, are the original inhabitants of the Guatemalan Highlands, where their lush culture flourished long before the era of Spanish conquest. Scholars believe they fused the tale of the bat's deity with that of their fire god to create the truly terrifying Camazotz. Much of the K'iche' history and surviving traditions can be found in a text they produced called the Popol Vuh.
