Downward Facing Notched Hook

Do not sing the Octoechos for this service.

The Octoechos is the church’s repeating eight-tone hymn cycle. A Typikon is a service book that lays out each day’s worship; its marks let clergy scan the instructions. Church Slavonic is the traditional language of these books. The notch applies during the days before or after a feast.

Syrnikov’s 1910 guide uses this mark in Yedinoverie parishes, a branch of Russian Orthodoxy that kept older worship books. The wider service-mark system is attributed to Nikon of the Black Mountain, a monk in the Greek-speaking Eastern Church, in the 11th century; a related Russian set is linked to Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod around 1500.