The DNA was always likened to a tree with 22 branches, or later, in esoteric lore, pathways. The knowledge of genetic science was symbolized by possession of a straight staff with a serpent motif. This is the reason why even today, the medical profession uses the Hermetic Caduceus.
The Caduceus - a staff intertwined by two serpents
There isn't anything esoteric about the term "Tree of Good and Evil". When it is realized that the reference is to DNA - all becomes clear. Both sides - literally the good and the evil had knowledge of the "Tree". Therefore, is should be read as the "Tree of the Good and/or the Evil".
The solipsistic academe would do well to remember and contemplate that before entry to prestigious colleges was permitted, there were other archives of knowledge, other paths and modes of learning. There is the story each race, nation, culture and civilization has been telling. These are not tales penned by a single self-absorbed individual, but riveting sagas of entire peoples, orally passed down and sanctified by time. To look to these myths and legends with contempt and intellectual condescension is to covet disaster. The tribulations to which they habitually refer were not written in ink or stone, but in blood - blood dead and blood living. They are in our DNA. The human body is the scriptorium where is kept the greatest gnosis. When will the occidental scholar realize that the real Academy, the real Lyceum, the real Library of Alexandria, the real chambers of Thoth, Hermes, or Merlin are not under a rock in some remote wilderness waiting to be discovered by a wanna-be Indiana Jones - they are in the house of bone, the temple of the nine gates - the human body. The famed "Pillars of Hercules" guarding the way to Atlantis are not of stone. They are the arms of Adam-Kad-Amon. They are the serpentine strands of DNA.
