The place is incorporeal — Mind and Reason, whose rays are the Good
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Asclepius — Ἀναντίρρητος ὁ λόγος, ὦ τρισμέγιστε. σώμά ἐστιν ὁ ἀήρ. τοῦτο δὲ τὸ σῶμα, ὃ διὰ πάντων διήκει τῶν ὄντων, καὶ πάντα διῆκον πληροῖ. τὸν οὖν τόπον ἐν ᾧ τὸ πᾶν κινεῖται, τί εἴπομεν;
Hermes — Ἀσώματον, ὦ Ἀσκληπιέ.
Asclepius — Τὸ οὖν ἀσώματον τί ἐστι;
Hermes — Νοῦς καὶ λόγος ὅλος ἐξ ὅλου ἑαυτὸν ἐμπεριέχων, ἐλεύθερος σώματος παντός, ἀπλανής, ἀπαθής, ἀναφής, αὐτὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἑστώς, χωρητικὸς τῶν πάντων καὶ σωτήριος τῶν ὄντων, οὗ ὥσπερ ἀκτῖνές εἰσι τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἡ ἀλήθεια, τὸ ἀρχέτυπον φῶς, τὸ ἀρχέτυπον τῆς ψυχῆς.
Asclepius — Ὁ οὖν θεὸς τί ἐστιν;
Hermes — Ὁ μηδὲ ἓν τούτων ὑπάρχων, ὢν δὲ καὶ τοῦ εἶναι τούτοις αἴτιος, καὶ πᾶσι καὶ ἑνὶ ἑκάστῳ τῶν ὄντων πάντων.
Irrefutable is the argument, O Thrice-greatest. Air is a body, and this body pervades all that is, and, pervading all, fills them. The place, then, in which the All moves — what shall we call it? — Incorporeal, O Asclepius. — And the incorporeal, what is it? — Mind and Reason, whole out of whole, containing itself, free of all body, unwandering, unaffected, untouchable, standing in itself; container of all and preserver of the things that are, whose rays, as it were, are the Good, the Truth, the archetypal light, the archetype of the soul. — And God, then, what is he? — The one who is not even one of these, yet who is the cause of being to them: to all together and to each single one of all the things that are.
The treatise reaches its summit. Asclepius grants the argument is irrefutable: air is body, pervading and filling all. So what shall we call the place (τόπος) in which the All moves? Hermes: incorporeal. And what is the incorporeal? Mind and Reason (Νοῦς καὶ λόγος) — whole out of whole, containing itself, free of all body, unwandering, unaffected, untouchable, standing in itself; container of all and preserver of the beings — of which, as it were, the rays are the Good, the Truth, the archetypal light, the archetype of the soul. Then Asclepius asks the last question: what, then, is God? Hermes: the one who is none of these, yet is the cause of being to them all — to all together and to each single one of the things that are.
This is the treatise's summit, and the interlinear is built for exactly this moment. The long chain of physical argument — mover and moved, rest and motion, the fullness of air — was all clearing the ground for one identification. The τόπος 'in which the All moves,' the place the whole enquiry has been circling since II.1, is ἀσώματον: incorporeal. And the incorporeal is named at last — Νοῦς καὶ λόγος, Mind and Reason, the two words CH I taught the reader never to flatten into one. The piled negatives (ἐλεύθερος, ἀπλανής, ἀπαθής, ἀναφής) are Greek negative theology in full flower: the divine defined by every bodily limit it lacks, yet 'standing in itself' (ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἑστώς) — the ἵστημι of the whole treatise now revealed as God's own self-subsistence.
Then the sunburst: this Mind is a source 'whose rays, as it were (ὥσπερ ἀκτῖνες), are the Good, the Truth, the archetypal light, the archetype of the soul.' It is Plato's sun of the Good (Republic VI) fused with the light-and-life of the Poimandres — the highest realities streaming out like beams. And when Asclepius asks the final question, 'what, then, is God?', Hermes places God even beyond the incorporeal Mind: 'the one who is not even one of these (ὁ μηδὲ ἓν τούτων ὑπάρχων), yet is the cause of their being.' Not the Good, not the Truth, not even Mind — but the ground of all of them, cause of being 'to all and to each single one.' The reveal layer earns its name here: English 'God' arrives flat, but the Greek shows a God defined by radical transcendence and total causality at once, the both/and that the negative theology of the whole Hermetic corpus turns on.
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