Downward-facing hook with dot

It is a Church Slavonic typicon symbol for hymn placement. A typicon is a service book with instructions for each day’s worship. 🤊 marks a forefeast (the days before a feast) or afterfeast (the days after) when the Octoechos, a book of hymns arranged in eight tones, is sung. It tells the reader to place the feast’s kontakion (short hymn) after Ode 3 and the saint’s after Ode 6. Odes are numbered songs in a longer hymn sequence called a canon.

Printed rubrics let service readers see the day’s order at a glance. The exact mark appears in Nikita Syrnikov’s practical guide to the Church Slavonic typicon, published in 1910 for Yedinoverie parishes. Yedinoverie is a Russian Orthodox movement whose members kept older liturgical books. Syrnikov’s system draws on earlier marks attributed to St. Gennadius of Novgorod, active around 1500. The wider tradition of typicon marks is attributed to Nikon of the Black Mountain, an 11th-century Byzantine liturgist.

Use 🤊 in a liturgical text

In a typicon, service calendar, or scholarly transcription, nearby words and the day’s context identify the rubric. Sent alone in a casual message, 🤊 gives the reader no clue to the specific service instruction.

🤊 is a text character drawn by the reader’s font, so its outline can vary between fonts while the character remains the same.