What the “wildling raiders” that Will saw were doing.

[Nadden]

What if the CotF, choosing the right medium, were looking for visions or some other type of message. What if they were desperately seeking guidance, a message from the Old Gods, communicated by their Greenseers, beyond the laws of nature. Our own history tells us that there have been various forms or ways attempting to gain insight, greensight, into situations by some type of ritual or practice of predicting the future.

The beliefs and practices of the Children seem to fall outside the scope of Westerosei religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, supernatural ideas like extra-sensory perception (ESP) and parapsychology.

The Children, who may have lived in clans and lived off the land, have a language which draws inspiration from the sounds of the natural world. And I believe their “magic” is derived from it also. The Children deal with natures magical forces directly, as opposed to ceremonial magic which deals with the summoning of spirits. Natural magic   uses of physical substances from the natural world such as stones or herbs. This we know of the Children also. They too use physical substance from the natural world. The Children are said to use stone and obsidian implements and wear bark leg-bindings and shirts of woven leaves.

Natural magic so defined includes astrology, alchemy, and disciplines that we would today consider fields of natural science, such as astronomy and chemistry (which developed and diverged from astrology and alchemy, respectively, into the modern sciences they are today) or botany (from herbology).

I believe the vision’s of the Greenseer’s depended on their impressions of visions in obsidian. They stare into the rock and visions come to them formed by their subconscious or imagination. They believed their visions are from the Old Gods. I believe their method involves a self-induced trance. Perhaps like how we use modern technology such as a smartphones among other things.

The Greenseer would focus their attention, removing unwanted thoughts from their mind perhaps with some type of repetitious mantra, maybe using some type of spiritual and ritual symbol, inducing the relaxation response, or possibly by hypnosis. Once this stage is achieved, the Greenseer may begin to freely associate with the perceived images. The technique of deliberately looking for and declaring these initial images aloud, however trivial or irrelevant they may seem to the conscious mind, attempts to deepen the trance state. Perhaps in this state the Greenseer hears their own disassociated voice affirming what they see, in a mental feedback loop.

Interestingly, the shows first episode appears to give us a theta symbol in the wildling raider camp. One use of the term, Theta, is with brain wave patterns. It’s an electrical impulse, given off by brain tissue, occurring at a regular frequency of 4 to 7 cycles per second. It’s associated with the dream state. Meditation has been shown to increase its power.

Somebody meditating might appear to be sleeping. Or even dead if seen at a distance. But a First Man looking into the rock under the proper moonlight would appear gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor would seem to change color as it moves; white as new-fallen snow in some spots and black as shadow others and even dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns would seem to run like moonlight on water with every step they took. Its longsword would be like none that anyone had ever seen. No human metal would’ve gone into the forging of the blade. It would come alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seems to almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There would be a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow one would know it was sharper than any razor.

The Others weren’t created by the rock in a man; but, by the man in the rock.

I believe legends grew from the men that saw themselves in these black stone mirrors that the Children used. Tales of ghosts helped the Haunted Forest to get it’s name.

The man in the mirror, looking like a couple against a rock, is scrying. The others that look fallen or sleeping are neither. They are meditating. They will merge into the dark of the wood when they hear Will and Waymar arrive. Waymar will see himself in the mirror later. 

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(AGOT, Prologue)

"Did you make note of the position of the bodies?"

Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like."

"Or sleeping," Royce suggested.

Fear came from the low frequency sound waves that accompanied these rocks. The “fear frequency” is what we call it in our world.

 

Nostradamus practiced scrying also; he would stare into a bowl of water or a "magic mirror" to see the future while he was in trance.