We recently connected with Andrew Cox and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Andrew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

The whole idea behind Nexus Occult Books and Odditied (N.O.B.O) and Nexus Academy of Magick and Esoteric Sciences (N.A.M.E.S.) was to be a resource and safe space for the Tucson occult community. While there are a dozen metaphysical supply stores in Tucson there wasn’t any true occult book stores and while some of the metaphysical stores hosted class on beginning astrology and tarot, there wasn’t any resources for true magick, witchcraft, divination, and the many of subjects that fall under the occult umbrella.

The occult community in Tucson is large but fragmented. I wanted to build a space that would bring together the many different types of occult practices, paths, faiths, and ideas of our community into one place. That’s what I was able to do with the bookstore. On August 2nd, I opened Nexus Academy of Magick and Esoteric Sciences next door to Nexus. We will be offering classes on traditional witchcraft, ceremonial magick, divination, and so much more! Most of our classes will be free as well.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My obsession with the occult is the result of three movies that I watched as a child. Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and The Exorcist. These movies launched my endless pursuit of everything “weird”. From vampires, witches, and aliens to bigfoot, ghosts, and demons, you name it, I had to know about it.

I’ve always enjoyed reading but my book collecting, some may say hoarding, didn’t really start going until I was a teenager. By then I had a job and was able to afford to purchase books on my own. I spent the next 25 years going to every thrift store, used bookstore, and garage sale looking for occult books. By the time I opened Nexus on August 3rd of 2022 I had just under 23,000 books.

I’m so happy to be able to share my passion for reading and for the occult with the Tucson community.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

With this being our first year in business and my first business that I owned, I wasn’t prepared for the rollercoaster that comes with it. We knew the summer months were going to be slow but we were expecting such a huge loss in revenue and foot traffic. To overcome this we made loyalty cards where for every $10 our customers spent they got a whole punch on the card and after 10 punches they received $10 off their next purchase.

We also started taking in trade which meant we were having to spend less money ordering new books for different publishers. We also had several sale days for in-store and online which really helped out make up the loss in revenue during these summer months.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I’m a very solitary and stubborn person. I don’t like relying on other people and I’m not one to ask for help. As much as I took pride in always being able to rely on myself to get the job done I had to come to terms with the fact that I can’t do it on my own all the time. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. I felt that asking for help with failing. Luckily I have such an amazing family and group of friends that were able to help me through some of the rough patches that you go through when opening a business. Family helped me financially with a loan as well as coming in to work at the store for free. I had to let go of my ego and accept the fact that it is ok to ask for help.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nexusoccult.com
• Instagram: @nexusoccult