My intention for this session, and the book that will hopefully come out of it and additional essays, was to write about territory and identity in Genesis and beyond, substituting a notion of ‘diaspora’ for ‘exile’, and problematizing the seemingly paradoxical biblical insistence of ‘our’ foreign descent as part and parcel of the ideological claim for owning the Promised Land even, or perhaps especially, in absentia. I thought that my own experience, as an Israeli foreign worker in European, American and Asian universities, a person who for years has moved between work and Israel, would help me gain insights into the cluster of issues that are metaphorized by attitudes to real or imagined territory.
But life intervened. Back in August a conference/seminar under the title Embroidered Garments was held in Kings College, London, organized by Diana Lipton and Deborah Rooke. The subject was a gender assessment of women in positions of social-function power, such as priesthood, politics, prophecy and community leadership, in the Hebrew bible. Let me make a plug-in here: a volume of the Embroidered Garments papers will be published by Sheffield Phoenix Press, soon. I was invited to speak at the conference and did so with great pleasure.
An ex-student who became a dear friend, Mary Hill of Fort Worth, Texas (where I taught at the Brite Divinity School), wrote to me that her cousin has written a book about Goddess embroidery that may or may not have a bearing on the conference topic. Was I interested? Yes, I was. So Mary sent the book to me and it duly arrived in Israel, as I was writing the paper for this session. It was now mid-October.
The book was written by Mary B. Kelly and was published in 1999. It is called Goddess Embroideries of the Balkan Lands and the Greek Islands (New York: Mclean Studiobooks). I took it with on a routine dental checkup. As it turned out, its topic was actual rather than metaphorical embroidered textiles, made by women, unlike the KCL conference name. And almost immediately, I sat up in waiting room chair, with full attention.
To begin with, the embroidery patterns photographed and schematized in the book were intimately recognizable. My parents were Ostjuden from Poland/Lithuania and immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine/Eretz Israel in the 1930’s. they had friends from Rumania, the former Yugoslavia and other 

Among her other titles, Ashera was known as "the Goddess of the Tree of Life", "the Divine Lady of Eden" and "the Lady of the Serpent". Ashera was often depicted as a woman holding one or more serpents in her hands. It was Ashera's serpent who advised Eve to disobey the male god's command not to partake of the sacred tree.

The historical record shows that the Old Testament version of the myth of Eve, the serpent and the sacred tree was concocted as propaganda against pre-existing Goddess cults.

Originally, the outcome of the Eden myth was not tragic, but triumphant. The serpent brought wisdom, and after the magic fruit was eaten, Adam himself became a god. What was originally involved was probably a psychedelic sacrament, like the Elusian festival in Athens, in which the worshipper ate certain hallucinogenic foods and became one with the Mother Goddess Demeter.

Like the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge was a symbol associated with the Goddess. The rites associated with her worship were designed to induce a consciousness open to the revelation of divine or mystical truths. In these rites cannabis and other magical plants were used, and women officiated as priestesses. 
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1374.html
Asherah, The Tree of Life and the menorah/ Asphodel Long
Wallace then discusses the Hebrew words for life and sees a possible connection between life- the Hebrew word hayyyim, and Eve, Hebrew word Hayya., He proposes a strong association between the two. Can Eve, called the Mother of all living, be identified as the Tree of Life itself? Wallace cites a fertility motif as the connecting link between the two. He sees a strong association between Eve, the Tree of Life, and Asherah, creatress of the gods, and writes ( 1985:114) "it is not impossible that a tree which is associated with fertility and the mother goddess figure on one level of a story could take on other life-giving aspects, also a divine gift at another level, especially when we remember the broad spectrum covered by the word "life".
Kabbalah:
At its heart stands a Tree of Life. Surrounding the Tree in all its glory is a divine female entity, named the Shekinah, the dwelling place of God. The nearest that the traditional commentators came to the feminine Shekinah was to say it represented the community of Israel, historically in a marriage relationship with God. But distinguished Kabbalah scholar Gershon Scholem found differently. He writes: (1969: 105) "the Shekinah becomes an aspect of God that is a quasi-independent feminine element within him. ..the necessary discovery of the female element with God...regarded with the utmost misgiving by non-Kabbalistic sources was a mystic conception of the feminine principle".
Conclusion
I have suggested tonight that the Hebrew religion contains a female divine figure, Asherah, who may have been the consort of God, Yhwh, and also was interchangeable with the Tree of Life. This latter is represented by the Menorah, the seven-branched candlestick, a religious symbol in Judaism whose connection with the female aspect of divinity has been lost. Until the archaeological finds of this century it was generally supposed that the forty texts in the Hebrew bible concerning Asherah, referred to wooden cult objects connected with earlier near eastern goddesses, associated with trees. To perceive in the biblical texts, any reference to the figure of Asherah as a Goddess in her own right, and certainly as a goddess of the Hebrews was condemned.
Referring back to my original question: Was the story of the denial of the Tree of Life to humans in Gen 3:24 a prohibition of worship of the goddess Asherah? It is suggested that an affirmative answer may respectably be given.
http://www.asphodel-long.com/html/asherah.html
1996=repr. 2007

 Bibliography
Binger, Tilde, Asherah: the Goddess in the Texts from Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997)
Cook, Roger, The Tree of Life (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974)
Gimbutas, Marija, The Language of the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991)
Goodenough, E.R., Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (Bollingen Series XXXVII; Toronto: Pantheon, 1965)
Hadley, Judith M., The cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Keel, Othmar, Goddesses and Trees, New Moon and Yahweh: Ancinet Near Estern Art and the Hebrew Bible (JSOTsupp 261; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998)
Kelly, Mary B., Goddess Embroideries of the Balkan Lands and the Greek Islands (New York: Mclean Studiobooks, 1999)
Long, Ashphodel, ‘Asherah, The Tree of Life and the menorah’, in Lisa Isherwood (ed.), Patriarchs, Prophets and Other Villains (Gender, Theology and Spirituality; London: Equinox, 2007 = http://www.asphodel-long.com/html/asherah.html)
McKinley, Judith E., Gendering Wisdom the Host: Biblical Invitations to Eat and Drink (JSOTsupp 216; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996)
Meyers, Carol, L. The Tabernacle Menorah (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976)
Olyan, S.M., Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press,1988)
Schroer, Silvia, In Israel gab es Bilder: Nachrichten von darstellender Kunst im Alten Testament (Orbis biblicus et orientalis; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1987)
----- Die Ikonographie Paleastinas/Israels Und Der Alte Orient: Eine Religionsgeschichte in Bildern, Bd.1: Vom Ausgehenden Mesolithikum Bis Zur Fruehbronzez (Fribourg: Presses Universitaires, 2005)
Smith, Mark S., The Early History of God: Jahweh and the other deities in Ancient Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990)
Wallace, H.N., The Eden Narrative (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985)