Motion rests on the unmoved — counter-motion of the spheres
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Hermes — ἡμῖν δὲ ἄλλο τί ἐστι, διὰ τοῦτο ἡμῖν νοεῖται. εἰ δὲ νοητὸς ὁ τόπος, οὐχι θεός, ἀλλὰ τόπος· εἰ δὲ καὶ θεός, οὐχ ὡς τόπος, ἀλλ' ὡς ἐνέργεια χωρητική. πᾶν δὲ τὸ κινούμενον οὐκ ἐν κινουμένῳ κινεῖται ἀλλ' ἐν ἑστῶτι· καὶ τὸ κινοῦν δὴ ἕστηκεν· ἀδύνατον γὰρ αὐτῷ συγκινεῖσθαι.
Asclepius — Πῶς οὖν, ὦ Τρισμέγιστε, τὰ ἐνθάδε συγκινεῖται τοῖς κινουμένοις; τὰς γὰρ σφαίρας ἔφης τὰς πλανωμένας κινεῖσθαι ὑπὸ τῆς ἀπλανοῦς σφαίρας.
Hermes — Οὐκ ἔστιν αὕτη, ὦ Ἀσκληπιέ, συγκίνησις ἀλλ' ἀντικίνησις· οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως κινοῦνται, ἀλλ' ἐναντίως ἀλλήλαις· ἡ δὲ ἐναντίωσις τὴν ἀντέρεισιν τῆς κινήσεως ἑστῶσαν ἔχει.
To us he is something other, and for this reason he is thought by us. But if the place is intelligible, it is not as God but as place; and if it is also God, then not as place but as a containing energy. And everything that is moved is moved not in something moved but in something standing still; and the mover, indeed, stands still, for it is impossible for it to be moved along with the moved. — How then, O Thrice-greatest, do the things here move along with the moved? For you said the wandering spheres are moved by the fixed sphere. — This is not co-motion, O Asclepius, but counter-motion; for they are not moved alike but contrary to one another; and the contrariety holds the resistance of the motion standing still.
God is thought by us only because to us he is 'something other'; but the place, if intelligible, is either mere place, or — if God — not a place but a 'containing energy.' The pivot: everything moved is moved not in something moved but in something standing still, and the mover itself stands. Asclepius objects: don't the planetary spheres move with the fixed sphere? Hermes: that is not co-motion but counter-motion — opposed motions whose contrariety holds a standing resistance.
The treatise reaches its physical heart, and it is a beautiful idea: motion rests on rest. 'Everything moved is moved not in something moved but in something standing still (ἑστῶτι), and the mover itself stands (ἕστηκεν).' The interlinear sets ἵστημι against κινέω line by line, so the reader sees the still point that every motion needs — the unmoved ground that, by II.4, is God, now recast as 'a containing energy (ἐνέργεια χωρητική),' not a place but an active holding-of-all.
Then Asclepius raises the obvious astronomy — the planets are turned by the fixed sphere, so surely things move together? Hermes's answer is elegant physics turned to metaphysics: this is not συγκίνησις but ἀντικίνησις, not co-motion but counter-motion. The spheres run contrary to one another, and it is precisely their 'contrariety (ἐναντίωσις)' that furnishes an 'ἀντέρεισις,' a bracing resistance — opposed thrusts holding each other steady, like the stones of an arch. Stability is made of opposition. The reader who follows the Greek watches the κιν-/ἱστ- roots and the ἐναντι- family interlock into a single argument English can only paraphrase.
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