Path of Enlightenment

In Vampire: The Masquerade, characters adopt Paths of Enlightenment in order to stave of the Beast without maintaining their Humanity. Paths are largely the province of the Sabbat, as Camarilla vampires adopt Humanity at least partly to enforce the Masquerade.

Basics
Characters who adopt a Path of Enlightenment intentionally abandon their humanity in favor of a synthetic code of behavior. Paths are effectively religions, complete with doctrine and a code of ethics, but they are also ruthlessly practical religions which ultimately serve to keep a Vampire's sanity together.

Starting out with a path
On creation, a player can opt to place

Differences Between Versions
Paths of Enlightenment were introduced in the Sabbat Player's Guide to explain how Sabbat could operate without Humanity. In 1st and 2nd edition Vampire, all Sabbat characters were on a Path and in fact had distinct virtues (Callousness, Instincts and Morale). In 1st and 2nd edition Vampire, all Sabbat were Shovelheads, and the resulting climb out of the grave stripped away all humanity, leaving the resulting fledgling open to a new viewpoint.

In Vampire: The Dark Ages an alternate system of Roads was introduced, which also added the concept of switched virtues. Each Road adopted Courage and two other virtues, either Conscience or Conviction and Self Control or Instinct. This system was eventually used in the Revised edition of Vampire, along with a change in paths for the Sabbat. Instead of receiving a path on creation, most Sabbat neonates and ancillae still followed humanity, although at very low levels.

Vampire: The Requiem does not use Paths of Enlightenment (yet); in general, the Paths eliminate a part of the "personal horror" aspect of Vampire by removing the Degeneration mechanism.