Circe

Is Circe considered a Goddess in the Greek religion in the sense of someone to be worshiped and venerated, or is she simply a sorceress and witch who lived among mortals of the time?

Both Homer and Hesiod call her the daughter of Helios, and both Homer and Cicero call her a goddess. Whether she was worshipped was a different question; after all, many of the Titans had no cult. Pausanias doesn't mention her. Strabo and Cicero say she was worshiped in Italy, in the Roman colony of Circeii, but that may have been a coincidence of names. Strabo also mentions a "tomb" on an island off the coast of Attica, which could be either (1) a bit of folklore or (2) the site of a hero cult.

But wouldn't it be safe to say that the ancient Greeks generally did not have a positive view of magic and witchcraft? After all, there were Gods who protected people against it.

AgathonZante wrote:But wouldn't it be safe to say that the ancient Greeks generally did not have a positive view of magic and witchcraft? After all, there were Gods who protected people against it.

To put it lightly. To be more frank, many people had a fear of hexes and witchcraft that would seem laughably superstitious today. Conversely, however, some things that people would today consider 'magic', like luck charms, anti-evil eye figures, and various good-luck and apotropaic items and practices would not have been considered witchcraft.

Circe, as David McCann mentions, seems to have had some sort of a shrine presence in the western Mediterranean, and, consequently, probably had some sort of a cultus there, but it was almost certainly not a significant or widespread cult. It would probably have been largely exclusive to the individuals involved with the upkeep of that shrine, and to the occasional individual coming to the shrine for extraordinary purposes.

I.e. the average person would not have worshipped her, and she does not seem to have had any cult sites through most of the Mediterranean world.