The oldest references in Sumerian identify her as an Amorite godess who is thought of as the Lady of the Mountain.
The nature of Asherah in connection with their religious practice has been obscure. Throughout the region, she seems to be held to be the consort of El, and as El came to be conflated with Jehovah (as had certainly become a rather thorough conflation by the time of Christ), Asherah was considered to be the consort of Jehovah. We know that the Deuteronomists considered that too much attention was being paid to Asherah, and that a campaign was prosecuted to remove her symbols from the public space, but there are several reasons to doubt their accounts. First, we know that Lehi considered the religious doctrines and practice of his day to be corrupt, and that he incorporated the Tree of Life, and apparently the Egyptian Nefer, into his religious iconography; both associated with Asherah. We also know that part of this campaign to purge unfavorable religious symbols led to the destruction of the Nehushtan (the Bronze Serpent created by Moses to heal the Israelites in the wilderness). We know this Nehushtan was a symbol of Christ. The accusation was that the Israelites had turned it into an idol by burning incense before it. Nevertheless, we also have an account from Isaiah that seems to describe him burning incense before the Nehushtan, which would seem to suggest this was an acceptable thing to do. This would seem to suggest that the burning of incense might not carry the same kind of weight that has often been supposed, though this is not something we do at all as part of religious our worship today, so it is hard to really know what its significance was.
For those who believe that the process resulting from Deuteronomical reforms, as described above, was an unholy campaign against Jehovah, the narrative for the loss of Asherah is a narrative of power consolidation in Israel. The idea is that the eradication of idols during the Deuteronomical reforms was not just the eradication of "foreign" idols, but the consolidation of worship around a unified tradition and practice centered on Jerusalem, more as a way to promote national unity, than as a way to promote a proper understanding of God. Under this framework, the eradication of Asherah from Jewish culture, just like the eradication of the concept of a divine son, would have been major pillars of the unification efforts.
The potential negative aspects of the Deuteronomical reforms are a subject I need to document more. None of it is standard LDS doctrine, which is odd because the Book of Mormon does much to make the case for it. Certainly, I accept that, minimally, these reforms did do much to contribute to the erasure of the Christ doctrine from Old Testament texts. I do not, however, think that it follows from there that any reverence for Asherah was justified, but I do think that the idea is intriguing.
Despite theories suggesting that Asherah may have been a legitimate religious figure, I continue to list Asherah as an idol, and, without better evidence, I will continue to do so.
Many LDS commentators have suggested that she may have been a figure representing a legitimate divine feminine figure.
While the divine feminine is not regularly discussed in LDS lessons and teaching materials, Joseph Smith nevertheless did teach that God has a wife. It is an open question as to why that wife is left unacknowledged in any open way in scripture. Perhaps worhips of our heavenly mother would be inappropriate. Perhaps is is unnecessary and culturally dangerous. Most often it has been suggested that God is somehow protecting her. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that there is a divine feminine; a heavenly mother.
Apart from Asherah, El Shaddai is often cited as a moniker associated with the divine feminine, and might be considered by some to reference the same entity. (El Shaddai, as it turns out, can be interpreted as God of the Mountain, as well as God Almighty, and God of the Two Breasts. The association between mountain and breasts is also ancient.)
While Asherah is most often described as a wife of Yahweh (Premortal Jesus), the presentation by Esoterica states that this was an evolution as Yahweh began to be conflated with El. Most originally, Asherah would have been the wife of El in ancient Hebrew and Canaanite religious tradition, and hence, would conform with LDS notions of a heavenly mother. One could go so far as to say that because Asherah conforms to our understanding of our heavenly mother, then it is sufficient to say that she is our heavenly mother. After all, "Asherah" is simply a name for the thing it describes. To that end, the identification is a fait accompli.
However even if this is true, the question would still remain; How much attention, and what kind of attention, is appropriate, when it comes to our heavenly mother? In addition, if we accept the identification, what then is true about what traditions exist surrounding Asherah?
While it is common to associate Asherah with the divine feminine,
Contrary to the standard hypothesis associating Asherah with the divine feminine, I have a new hypothesis here. Perhaps Asherah was Mary, and was not held to be a God, but was rather, a name, akin to Jehovah, or Michael, or Gabriel, describing an important figure in their temple story. In this case, the feminine figure that would bring forth the Messiah. Hence, she would properly be a consort of El, and she would also properly be associated with the Tree of Life, and aspects of Nephi's vision of the tree of life might make more sense; particularly, some of the leaps of understanding he makes based on the symbols and visions he sees.
It is entirely possible that just as today Mary receives inappropriate adoration, a pre-atonement representation of Mary might also have received inappropriate adoration. However, it also seems reasonable to imagine that the campaign to cleanse Israel of Asherah iconography also cleansed Israel of the explicit testimonies of Christ that the Book of Mormon describes as having been shared by all prophets. We know very well that in Lehi's day, the dominant Jewish culture in Jerusalem was hostile to the Atonement, and the Messiah, as doctrines, and hence would have been hostile to the entirety of the prophesied narrative.
Another interesting point here is that this idea also creates a kind of pleasant mirroring or echo of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for this tree too is associated with a feminine figure, Eve, which would book end the plan of salvation and pre-atonement temple iconography with a woman and an associated tree, one bringing the start of life and the initiation into the wilderness, and the other bringing the finishing and perfecting of man.
Anyhow, based on this understanding of the symbolism and culture of the Lehites, I think this makes far more sense than the idea that Asherah represented heavenly mother as a kind of worshipable goddess.