To gold, To gold, In times of old. Mixture, Mixture, Immortal elixir?

If it don't fit, you must acquit, though we all know he was guilty.

In the cave of shadows, this ancient thinker saw forms that danced beyond mere illusions, his dialogues still echo in academia's halls.

The first was tied to emancipation, and sadly, assassination. The last are parts of a tree, or what may float in a latrine. Together we stack with simple notches, building cabins in frontier fashion.

Ironically, our word transmuted from French, from Latin, from Arabic, from Greek, and possibly originally from Egyptian. Its practitioners hid the gold of their discoveries using cryptic and symbolic language. Magically it relied upon four elements. Its practitioners sought immortality from important discoveries.