René Guénon - The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

He can therefore be regarded as the chief of the awliyā al-shayṭān , and as he will be the last to fulfill that function, and at the same time his function will then have its most manifest importance in the world, it can be said that he will be as it were their ‘seal’ ( khātim ), according to the terminology of Islamic esoterism; it is not difficult to see from this to what point the parody of the tradition will be carried in all its aspects.

Money itself, or whatever may take its place, will once more possess a qualitative character of this sort, for it is said that ‘no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name’ (Rev. 13:17), and this implies the actual use in connection with money of the inverted symbols of the ‘counter-tradition’.

Thus he will be the antithesis of the Christ saying ‘I am the Truth’, or of a wali like al-Ḥallāj saying in the same way ‘ ana’l-Ḥaqq .

‘The analogy existing between the true doctrine and the false has perhaps not received sufficient attention: St. Hippolytus, in his little work on the Antichrist gives a memorable example of it which will not be surprising to people who have studied symbolism: the Messiah and the Antichrist both have as their emblem the lion.’ (P. Vulliaud, La Kabbale Juive , vol. II, p373) The profound reason from the kabbalistic point of view lies in the consideration of the two faces, luminous and obscure, of Metatron ; it is also why the Apocalyptic number 666, the ‘number of the Beast’, is also a solar number (cf. The King of the World ).

Here there is an untranslatable double meaning: Masīkh can be taken as a deformation of Masīha , by the mere addition of a dot to the final letter; but at the same time the first word means ‘deformed’, which correctly expresses the character of the Antichrist.